A lot of people who breed Bearded
Dragons for the first time don't realise just how much is involved with
raising healthy babies. I'm going to discuss some of the costs
associated with breeding Bearded Dragons, and try to come up with a few
rough figures for what you might expect to spend and make back from
breeding for the first time. All prices are approximate, based on June
2009.
First things first, you will need a
pair of healthy Dragons, preferably housed alone. If housed together all
year, male Dragons can cause a lot of stress and damage to a female,
through continually attempting to breed with her. Although these are
normal during breeding, if the female is never given a break, they will
never heal and can end up becoming sore and infected:
Two Dragons and two setups will be in
the region of £500, not including the food you'll need to spend to get
them to adult size. Typically they will eat 1-4 boxes of insects per
week (at around £2 each, that's £100-400 per year in livefood), plus
greens.
Assuming you already have a pair of suitable Dragons and are now
considering putting them together for the first time, let's look at
what you will need to buy before any babies hatch out.
Extra
food for the female
Egg
laying can take a lot of out females (up to 25% of their body weight
per clutch), so they need to be in prime condition before breeding,
and will then eat a lot of food between clutches to try to maintain
their weight. It's not uncommon for a female to eat a box of locusts
every day. With 3-4 weeks between clutches and 2-4 clutches in total,
that's potentially a box of locusts each day for 12 weeks. At £2 per
box, that works out at over £150 in food for the female, just to get
her through egg laying. She'll also need extra supplementation.
Laying
Box / Incubation Substrate
A clean
washing up bowl (£5) can be used for most Dragons to lay in. You'll
also need some kind of substrate to put in the incubator to put the
eggs in. Perlite or Vermiculite are widely used (£5).
An
Incubator
These can either be built DIY, or premade ones can be purchased. For a
premade one, expect to pay £50-100 for a very basic model. If building
your own, you'll need a Heat Mat (£10), a
Pulse Thermostat
(£40), and a Thermometer (£10).
This is where a large proportion of
your money will be spent.
Baby
Bearded Dragons grow very rapidly and have voracious appetites. If
overcrowded or underfed, they will start to nip at each other - this
is one of the main reasons for the number of Dragons which have
missing feet or tails. To stop this from happening, they
should be housed in groups of five at the most. You may still get the
odd nip or two from babies missing their food and getting each other,
but the number will be greatly reduced if they are housed properly.
A typical Bearded Dragon clutch will
have 20-30 eggs, and most female Dragons show very high fertility, so
you should expect the vast majority of those eggs to hatch out. This
means you'll need 4-6 complete setups for the first clutch of babies,
depending on how many eggs she lays.
If you're housing them in vivariums,
you'll need at least 2' x 1' for the babies (and it will be easier
with 3' x 1' because of the thermal gradient needed). Six 2' x 1'
vivariums will cost at least £50 each (£300). You'll need lighting for
each cage - UV tubes and starters (£120-180). If using enclosed cages
they should also be thermostatted (£80-120).
Each cage needs a rock or two, food
and water dishes etc (£10-15).
That's a total of around £400-600,
but it doesn't end there. Because the clutches are laid 3-4 weeks
apart, and Dragons shouldn't be rehomed until they're 6-8 weeks old,
you'll need twice as much equipment for the second clutch of eggs
(another £400-600), and possibly for a third clutch if you struggle to
rehome the first clutch before the third clutch hatches (potentially
another £400-600).
The rest of the money you spend will be
spent after the babies hatch.
Housed in groups of five, you'll be looking at paying electricity on
4-6 cages for 6-8 weeks (£5-10 per clutch). The babies also need
feeding. As will be explained in our Breeding Guide (coming soon),
babies do best when fed 2-3 times per day, being allowed to eat as
much food as they want to. A baby can eat up to 50 or so crickets per
day - that means you could be going through 1000-1500 crickets per
day. Buying in bulk, this can work out at £5-10 per day; this is
£35-70 per week, which is £210-£560 to get a clutch of babies to 6-8
weeks old.
The babies will take a lot of time
as well - when they're growing they can all go to the toilet twice a
day, which means the cages have to be cleaned out at least once or
twice per day. Catching all 5 babies, putting them in a holding
container, emptying the cage, refilling it, catching the babies again
and putting them back will typically take 5-10 minutes. If you have
two clutches at once, that's 8-12 cages, which is one to two hours
every day, just to clean them out! Feeding them twice a day will take
another few minutes per cage, which is another half hour to an hour,
every day. Finely chopping the greens they will be eating as babies
will take up another chunk of time. If your female lays 4 clutches of
eggs, it'll take a couple of hours per day for up to 5 months before
they're all hatched, grown on and sold. If you can't give up that much
time, it's the babies which will suffer; hungry babies will attack one
another, often causing permanent damage.
At 6-8 weeks old, you'll be able to
start looking for new homes for the babies. Generally speaking, the
first time you breed Dragons, you won't cover the costs of equipment
and food. If you sell them individually, a Dragon will usually sell
for £20-30, depending on where in the country you are. That's around
£400-600 for a clutch of 20 babies, if you can find homes for them
all. If you can't sell them all at once, you'll have to keep feeding
them until you can find homes for them. If they have any "damage"
(missing toes / feet / tails etc) then they will sell for a lot less
- perhaps £10-15 per baby. Selling in bulk to petshops can be a lot
more convenient, and means you don't have to keep feeding the babies
whilst searching for new homes, but don't expect to get much more
than £15-20 per baby from most shops.
The price does depend on the time of
year - by the end of the summer, a lot of people will end up giving
the babies away for free, simply because the market has become
saturated (assuming you're breeding "normal" morph Dragons). It's
not unheard of for people to get unlucky and only be able to sell
half of a clutch, and have to give the rest away. They still have to
pay for the equipment, the electricity and the food though!
So far we've estimated that it will
cost around £1600 to get all of the babies to a sellable size,
possibly £2000 if you have to house a third clutch of babies before
you've rehomed all of the first clutch. In addition to this is usually
around 200-300 hours of your time, spread over the several months that
you will have babies in your care.
From selling the babies, you can expect
£400-800 for a perfect clutch if you sell all of them privately, or
£300-500 if selling them to shops. For three clutches of eggs, you'll
typically get around £1000-1600 back, which means if you're very lucky
you'll just about cover your costs (but not your time) the first time
you breed dragons. If the Dragons have toe or tail nips from being
overcrowded or underfed you might only get £10-15 per baby, in which
case you should expect to make back £250-350 per clutch. This will not
cover costs, which is why it's important to keep babies well fed, and
in small groups.
Breeding in subsequent years, or
breeding desirable morphs, might make a small profit because you
already have the equipment needed, but it will still take the same
amount of time and initial investment in food etc. The UV tubes should
be replaced after 6 months of use, which is approximately two breeding
cycles (assuming you are housing babies for 3 months for each time you
breed).
Breeding Bearded Dragons really
isn't something that you can dive straight into without preparing.
Generally speaking, you will have to pay for 8-18 cages, plus food for
one clutch for 6-8 weeks and a second clutch for 3-4 weeks before you
start to get any money back. This can easily add up to £1000 before
you see a single penny back.
For the babies' sakes, please make
sure that you can afford the money and time commitments BEFORE you put
a pair of Dragons together. Too many babies are hatched out and then
not looked after properly.
If you are sure you can afford
all this, I have put together a basic
Bearded Dragon Breeding Guide.
