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.

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.