Living with a dragon

13.1One dragon per enclosure

Keep one bearded dragon per enclosure. Always. No exceptions for pets.

Cohabitation is still sold at pet stores, still shown in marketing photographs, and still produces animals that die slowly while their keeper believes everything is fine.

They are not social animals

Bearded dragons are solitary and territorial. They don’t pair-bond, they don’t share territory cooperatively, they don’t form friendships, and they don’t get lonely. In the wild, adults come together to mate and then separate. There is no cooperative behavior of any kind to replicate.

A single dragon housed alone with correct lighting, heat, space and enrichment is not missing anything. The desire to give it a companion is a human projection, and acting on it is one of the more common ways to harm a healthy animal.

How the subordinate dragon dies

This is the part to understand, because it explains why cohabitation harms animals that are never seen fighting.

Put two dragons together and a hierarchy forms. It isn’t optional and it isn’t negotiable. One animal dominates and one submits. The dominant animal claims the single best resource in the enclosure, which is the basking site. And in a bearded dragon enclosure the basking site is the one place where correct UVB, correct infrared and correct visible light overlap. There is exactly one of it, by design. See 3.6.

The subordinate animal loses access to all three at once, and the cascade follows.

1. 1.Less basking, so lower core body temperature, so impaired digestion. A reptile that can’t reach its preferred body temperature after eating can’t process the meal. Food sits and ferments in the gut. This alone causes illness.
2. 2.Less UVB, so less D3 synthesis, so impaired calcium absorption, so metabolic bone disease. The subordinate dragon can be in an enclosure with a perfect UVB setup and still develop MBD, because it’s never allowed to sit under it. See 3.3, 5.1, 11.1.
3. 3.Less food. The dominant animal eats first and eats more. Feeding responses are fast and competitive.
4. 4.Chronic stress in both animals. The dominant one isn’t relaxed either; it’s maintaining a territory it can’t escape from.
5. 5.Decline. The subordinate loses weight, becomes lethargic, stops eating greens, develops recurring infections, and eventually presents at a vet with MBD or a secondary illness, often long after the damage is irreversible.

The keeper’s experience of this is: “they always got on fine, and then one of them just got sick.”

Stacking is not cuddling

The photograph that sells cohabitation is two dragons stacked on the basking rock, one lying across the other. It is genuinely charming and it is the clearest possible warning sign.

Stacking is a dominance display. The animal on top is the dominant one. It is physically occupying the resource and simultaneously blocking the animal underneath from the heat and the UVB it is lying directly beneath. The subordinate dragon isn’t being cuddled. It’s being used as furniture, in the one spot in the enclosure it most needs to access.

Injuries

Beyond the slow decline, cohabitation produces acute trauma. Documented outcomes in cohabited dragons, particularly in pet-store and breeder group housing, include missing toes, bitten and lost limbs, lost or damaged tails, facial and eye injuries, and death.

Toe and tail biting is especially common in group-housed juveniles, where fast-moving siblings are mistaken for food and a mixed-size group means the smallest animals are outcompeted and injured. A bearded dragon can’t regrow a tail or a toe. These injuries are permanent. Any bite wound needs a vet; see 11.7.

“But they seem fine”

Reptiles are exceptionally good at masking stress and discomfort. They are prey animals as well as predators, and an animal that visibly shows weakness in the wild is an animal that gets eaten. There is strong selection pressure against showing you anything.

By the time a bearded dragon looks unwell it has usually been unwell for a considerable time. “They seem fine” is not evidence, because the absence of visible distress is exactly what you would expect to observe in both a genuinely fine dragon and a chronically stressed one.

The question isn’t are they fighting? It’s: are both animals eating equally, gaining weight equally, and using the basking site equally, measured rather than eyeballed? Almost nobody who cohabits can answer yes with data.

Disease

Everything in 13.3 applies with extra force. Two dragons sharing an enclosure share every pathogen: parasites and coccidia fecal-orally in a confined space, adenovirus fecal-orally, yellow fungus by direct contact and shared surfaces. Cohabitation converts any single infection into a collection-wide one, immediately, and removes the possibility of identifying which animal is the source.

It also makes basic husbandry impossible to run properly. You can’t tell whose stool you’re looking at, so you can’t tell whose fecal sample you collected, so you can’t tell which animal to treat.

The honest counterargument

Wild bearded dragons are not perfectly asocial, and it’s worth saying so rather than overstating the case. Field observations describe loosely-formed aggregations and shared basking areas, and there is a body of research on social learning in Pogona vitticeps involving conspecifics.

It doesn’t translate to a vivarium, for one reason: scale. In the wild, a subordinate animal displaced from a basking log walks away and finds another one. It has hundreds of square meters, multiple basking sites, escape routes, and the option of simply leaving. In a 4 × 2 × 2 ft enclosure with one correct basking site there is nowhere to go and nothing else to go to. The hierarchy has no release valve.

The wild-social-behavior argument is an argument for large, complex, multi-basking-site outdoor enclosures under expert management. It isn’t an argument for two dragons in a vivarium.

13.2If you already have two together

Separate them now. Not at the weekend, not when the next enclosure is on sale.

• , Move the subordinate animal to the new enclosure if you can identify it, and give it the better setup. It’s the one carrying the deficit.
• , Get both animals seen by an exotic vet, with fecal samples from each collected after separation so you know whose is whose.
• , Weigh both, weekly, for at least two months. The subordinate animal’s weight trajectory after separation is the clearest evidence of what was actually happening. See 13.6.
• , Expect the subordinate to improve noticeably (better appetite, more basking, better color) within weeks. That improvement is the diagnosis.
• , Keep them out of sight of each other. Visual contact through two glass panels across a room is enough to sustain display behavior and stress.

13.3Quarantine

Any new reptile entering a household that already contains reptiles must be quarantined. Not just new bearded dragons. Any reptile, of any species. Several of the pathogens that matter here cross between species.

Quarantine also applies to an animal returning from a reptile show, an expo, a breeding loan or a boarding stay; an animal that has been in contact with an unknown collection; and any animal in your collection that becomes ill.

If the new dragon is your only reptile, formal quarantine is unnecessary. Everything in 12.13, particularly the fecal exam, still applies.

Duration

A reasonable default for a home keeper: 60 days minimum, 90 days if you can, with a fecal exam at intake and a second before release. If your existing collection matters to you (breeding animals, long-lived individuals, a rescue situation) err towards the longer end and add adenovirus PCR.

The setup

• , A separate room, not a separate shelf. Airborne and fomite transmission both matter, and the other end of the reptile room is not quarantine.
• , Separate air where you can manage it. Ideally not sharing a forced-air duct with the main collection. In a normal house that usually means a closed door and no shared vent, which is imperfect and far better than nothing.
• , A simple, sterile setup. Paper towel substrate, minimal decor, everything non-porous and either disposable or fully disinfectable. You want to see every stool and be able to bleach every surface.
• , The full correct lighting and heating still applies. Quarantine is not an excuse for a bare tub with a heat mat. The animal still needs UVI 3–5 and a correct basking site, arguably more than usual because it’s under stress.
• , Completely separate equipment, tongs, bowls, thermometer, spray bottle, cleaning cloths, substrate scoop. Color-code or label it. Nothing crosses between the quarantine room and the main collection, ever.

Hygiene: the order of operations

This is the part that gets done wrong most often, and it’s the easiest to get right. Always work in this order.

1. 1.Established, healthy animals first.
2. 2.New or quarantined animals last.
3. 3.Known-sick animals last of all.

• , Wash hands with soap and water between every animal. Not just at the end.
• , Dedicated clothing for the quarantine room where practical, or at minimum an apron or overshirt you take off on the way out.
• , Disinfect tools after every use, even though they’re dedicated.
• , Handle the quarantined animal last on any given day, and don’t go back to the main collection afterwards without washing and changing.
• , Bag and remove waste from the quarantine room directly, not through the reptile room.

Disinfectants that work are the ones in 6.8: a veterinary-grade disinfectant, 10% household bleach with a minimum 2-minute contact time, and steam. Rinse thoroughly and let everything dry and off-gas before an animal goes back in.

What you’re actually quarantining against

Parasites. The routine case, and the one a fecal exam catches. Coccidia in particular spread readily between animals sharing an environment and are hard to eliminate once established. See 11.5.

Adenovirus. The one that makes quarantine genuinely necessary rather than merely prudent. It’s transmitted fecal-orally and vertically from mother to offspring, carriers are frequently asymptomatic, and the virus is never cleared. Detection is by PCR on an oral or cloacal swab or feces. See 11.2.

Yellow fungus disease. Spread by direct contact and indirectly via fomites: shared tongs, hands, cloths, decor. Research has detected viable N. guarroi in the housing environment before any skin lesions appeared on the animal. The enclosure becomes infectious before the dragon looks sick. Prognosis is poor, treatment is prolonged, and infections in collections classically trace back to an unquarantined new arrival. See 11.3.

13.4The bulb birthday

This is the most consequential forgettable task in the hobby. A dragon can be kept in a correct 4 × 2 × 2, under the correct fixture, at the correct distance, with the correct supplements, and still develop metabolic bone disease because the bulb is three years old.

If you own a UV index meter, replace on measurement

Everything else in this section is calendar-based estimation for keepers without instruments. A UV index meter or 6.5R replaces the whole argument with a number.

1. 1.When you install a new bulb, measure the UVI at the basking surface, at the animal’s back height, with the middle of the tube over the spot (3.6). Write that number down. It’s your baseline, and without it later readings mean much less.
2. 2.Re-measure at least monthly, at the same distance and position. Note the distance every time. A reading without a distance isn’t data.
3. 3.Act on the reading, not the date. The target is UVI 3–5, ideally 4.5 (3.3). Once the reading at your basking spot has fallen below 3, the bulb is no longer doing its job at that geometry.

Why “it still works” means nothing

A fluorescent UVB tube makes UVB the same way it makes visible light. A mercury arc inside the tube emits deep ultraviolet, and a phosphor coating on the inside of the glass converts that into the output you want. The UVB you care about, 295–315 nm peaking at 297 (3.1), comes from a specific part of that phosphor blend.

Phosphor degrades with use. It degrades continuously from the first hour, and the UVB-producing fraction degrades faster than the fraction producing visible light.

Without a meter: the honest range

Published replacement intervals for reptile UVB lamps run from 6 to 12 months depending on lamp type, brand and source, and the range is genuine rather than sloppy.

The rule: follow the replacement interval published for the specific bulb you own, by that bulb’s manufacturer. If your bulb’s manufacturer doesn’t publish one, that is itself a reason to buy a different bulb.

What shortens the interval

The 12-month figure assumes 10–12 hours a day on correct control gear. Four things make it optimistic.

• , A longer photoperiod. A lamp run 14 hours a day accumulates its 12 months of operating hours in roughly 10 calendar months.
• , Frequent switching. Fluorescent tubes age faster with on/off cycling than with steady running. A timer that cycles the UVB several times a day is worse than one clean 12-hour block.
• , Wrong or failing control gear. The published figures are explicitly conditional on it. One more reason the fixture matters as much as the tube.
• , Heat. A tube run hot (crammed against a hood, or sandwiched next to a basking lamp with no airflow) ages faster.

A shortened brumation photoperiod (7.1) does not buy you extra time in any calculable way. Fewer hours a day does slow the ageing, but not on a clean linear schedule, and brumation is exactly the period when you least want to discover a UV shortfall. Don’t extend the birthday on that basis without a meter.

The habit that actually works

Measurement discipline fails because nobody remembers. The fix is mechanical.

• , Write the install date on the bulb in permanent marker, on the metal end cap. ⚠ Not on the glass. Marker on the phosphor tube blocks output along that strip, and the strip you’d naturally write on is the middle, the strongest part of the tube, and the part that has to be over the basking spot (3.6).
• , Set a calendar reminder for 11 months out, not 12. You want the replacement in your hand before the old one is due out. Some manufacturers run a free reminder service that emails you at the interval, worth signing up for if yours does.
• , Log it alongside the weight and fecal records (13.6). The bulb install date belongs in the same document as everything else you’d hand to a vet.
• , Buy the replacement before you need it. A dragon can’t wait a week for a bulb any more than it can wait a week for its initial setup.
• , If two bulbs are ever in the house, label both. The commonest failure after forgetting entirely is swapping the old one back in.

13.5The maintenance schedule

This assumes a non-bioactive enclosure on solid or loose substrate. Bioactive setups run a different maintenance model built on a clean-up crew.

Clean is the target, sterile isn’t

There’s a failure mode at the other end. Deep-cleaning weekly, or reaching for disinfectant every time you see the animal, is stressful for the dragon, hard on decor and unnecessary. A monthly deep clean on top of daily spot cleaning keeps pathogen load down without turning the enclosure into a hospital.

13.6Weighing and record keeping

A cheap kitchen scale is the best diagnostic tool most keepers will ever own.

The feeding schedule in 4.1 is keyed to weight, not age, and says so pointedly, because age-based feeding charts are among the most common sources of harm in this hobby (6.1). That schedule has a hard threshold in it: babies 30 g and under get 5–6 feeders once a day, and babies and juveniles over 30 g get 5–6 every other day. You can’t apply that without a scale. A keeper who doesn’t weigh is guessing at which row they’re on, and the two rows differ by a factor of two.

The brumation rule has the same dependency. “A brumating dragon should not lose more than 10% of its body weight” (7.1) is unusable without a pre-brumation baseline recorded in grams.

What to buy: a digital kitchen or postal scale reading in grams, with a tare function, ideally 2,000 g capacity at 1 g resolution. It’s a $15–20 item and it’s more diagnostically useful than most $100 items in a reptile aisle.

How to weigh: put a container on the scale, press tare, put the dragon in. Weigh at the same time of day, ideally in the morning before feeding, so meals and defecation don’t add noise to the trend.

Reading the trend

There is no single correct weight for a bearded dragon, and any chart claiming otherwise is the weight equivalent of an age-based feeding chart. Adults vary enormously with genetics, morph, frame and sex. LafeberVet gives juveniles at roughly 2–3 g and adults at at least 250 g; the commonly quoted hobby range for adults over 18 months is 350–550 g.

Body condition governs and the number is context. The condition scale in 6.1 (morbidly obese, obese, healthy, emaciated) is the primary assessment, along with its warning that many keepers have internalised an obese animal as normal. The weight log’s job is to tell you which direction the animal is moving, and to tell you before it’s visible.

The log

One page, one spreadsheet, or one note on your phone. What matters is that it exists and that it can be handed to a vet.

An exotic vet presented with twelve months of weights, shed dates and a bulb install date can work with the actual history of the animal. The same vet presented with “he’s been a bit off lately” is starting from nothing, on an animal built to hide illness until it’s advanced.

13.7Feeder insect husbandry

4.2 covers which insects to feed and how often. This is what happens to them before they reach the dragon, which determines most of their nutritional value, and the several ways feeder insects can hurt an animal.

Gut loading

Gut loading is feeding the feeder insect a nutrient-dense diet before it goes to your dragon, so the contents of the insect’s gut become part of the meal. It isn’t the same thing as dusting and it doesn’t replace it. Dusting coats the outside of the insect with calcium, D3 or multivitamin powder (5.2). Gut loading fills the inside. You do both.

5.1 explains why supplements aren’t optional: captive feeders and greens skew phosphorus-heavy, and a dragon has to hold 2:1 calcium to phosphorus or start pulling calcium from its own bones. A gut-loaded insect is a less phosphorus-heavy insect. Same problem, addressed one step upstream.

The working rule is 24–48 hours before feeding. Longer than that and the insect digests and excretes what you loaded into it, so the nutrients stop being in the gut and stop being part of the meal. Species differ, and the differences are real.

What to load with. On a commercial gut-load product, read the guaranteed analysis: calcium above 8%, protein below about 20%, ingredients along the lines of alfalfa, fruit, edible flowers, calcium carbonate and bee pollen. Fresh produce works and the daily-list greens in 4.3 are exactly right, collard, mustard, turnip and dandelion greens, squash, carrot and other high-moisture vegetables.

Avoid loading feeders on grain-heavy, bran-based or dog and cat food diets. Those are phosphorus-heavy and protein-heavy, which is the ratio you’re trying to correct.

Keeping feeders alive

Water goes in via water crystals or gel, or via high-moisture vegetables. ⚠ Open water dishes drown feeder insects and foul fast.

Ventilation matters more than space. A crowded, humid, unventilated tub kills crickets in days and produces the ammonia smell people blame on the insects themselves.

Order sizing: buy only what you’ll use within the gut-load window plus a small buffer. The adult schedule in 4.1 (5–6 feeders twice weekly) is a much smaller order than most beginners place.

Wild-caught insects

4.2 already says to source from a reputable supplier. The reasoning is worth spelling out, because “I caught him a grasshopper in the garden, he loved it” is common and sounds harmless.

1. 1.Pesticides. A wild insect’s chemical exposure history is unknown and unknowable. Agricultural spray, municipal mosquito abatement, a neighbor’s lawn treatment, residue on a plant it fed on, all of it concentrates in an animal that eats insects whole. Reptiles are exposed through direct application, environmental contamination, ingestion of treated prey, or contact with contaminated surfaces.
2. 2.Parasites. Wild insects are far more likely to serve as intermediate hosts for parasites capable of infecting reptiles, because they have vastly more contact with contaminated sources than a captive-bred feeder does. This is the risk that lands you in 6.8.
3. 3.Identification. You have to be right about what you caught, every time, in poor light, from across a garden. 13.8 is what happens when you’re wrong once.

Don’t leave crickets in the enclosure overnight

Crickets are omnivores with functional biting mandibles, and a sleeping dragon is a large, warm, motionless source of moisture and protein. Uneaten crickets left in an enclosure will chew on the animal. The reported targets are toes, tail tip, eyelids, and the skin around the eyes, nostrils and mouth.

The consequences run from irritation and stress up to broken skin and secondary infection, in an animal that can’t get away from them and is asleep in the dark.

• , Remove every uneaten feeder before lights-out, every day, without exception. That’s why it’s a daily line in 13.5.
• , Offer crickets in numbers the dragon will actually finish. The 5–6 appropriately sized feeders in 4.1 is a small enough serving that few escape.
• , Feed from a dish, or in a separate feeding container, so escapees are containable. Chilling crickets briefly before feeding slows them down and makes both catching and eating easier.
• , Roaches are the safer default for keepers who can’t supervise every feeding. They don’t bite dragons, they hide rather than roam, and they can’t climb smooth walls. You should still remove them, but the failure mode if you forget is much less serious.

13.8Fireflies are lethal

This belongs on the never list in Appendix B and it deserves emphasis beyond anything else about feeders.

Fireflies contain lucibufagins, steroidal pyrones chemically related to the bufadienolides in Bufo toads and the cardenolides in Digitalis. They are cardiotoxic. They poison heart muscle. And the dose is astonishingly small.

Clinical course: signs typically appear 15 minutes to 2 hours after exposure, head shaking, mouth gaping, retching and vomiting, progressing to laboured breathing, color change and death. Death occurs within 2 hours of exposure.

• , Never offer any glowing or bioluminescent insect to any reptile or amphibian. Toxicity has also been reported in chameleons, and other lizard species are likely susceptible.
• , Bearded dragons are considered more vulnerable than other lizards because they are indiscriminate eaters. The trait that makes them easy to feed makes them easy to poison.
• , ⚠ Don’t let a dragon free-roam outdoors, or sit in an open outdoor pen, at dusk during firefly season. Keep dragons indoors during twilight hours when fireflies are active. A dragon that can see a lightning bug is unlikely to resist it. See 12.15.

Also on the wild-caught toxin list: wild tomato and tobacco hornworms accumulate toxins from the solanaceous plants they feed on. ⚠ This does not apply to the commercially cultivated hornworms recommended for hydration in 4.2 and 9.4, which are raised on a prepared diet and are safe. Wild-caught versus captive-bred is the entire distinction.

13.9What the enclosure is made of

2.1 fixes the size at a minimum of 4 × 2 × 2 ft at any age, and explains that the minimum exists to make correct lighting geometry possible. This covers what the enclosure should be made of and how it opens, which are the decisions that determine how hard everything in Chapter 3 will be.

On wood, if you build or buy it: apply the basking-surface wood rule from 2.5 to the whole box. Avoid coniferous and eucalyptus species. Plywood made from cedar, pine or fir is the wrong choice. Hardwood ply (oak, maple, birch) is the right one.

Ventilation

Ventilation isn’t a hole in the top. It’s airflow across the enclosure, driven by a low intake at the cool end and a high exhaust. Warm air rises and leaves, drawing cooler air in behind it. A single vent, or a lid alone, produces a box of stagnant air with a warm layer at the ceiling.

This matters because of 6.3. Respiratory infection is bred by excess moisture, poor ventilation and a dirty enclosure, and those three are usually one condition. A glass tank with a partly-covered lid, a large open water bowl and a daily misting habit is the classic setup for it.

Front-opening against top-opening

The standard argument for front-opening doors is that a hand descending from above triggers the anti-predator response of a small prey animal whose main natural threat is a bird, so reaching in from the front is less frightening. That’s the parietal eye mechanism in 12.11.

So don’t oversell the aerial-predator claim as settled science. The husbandry case for front-opening is easier to defend and doesn’t need the behavioral argument at all.

1. 1.You can service the enclosure without reaching over a lit basking lamp and a UVB fixture, which is a burn risk to you and a knock-the-fixture-out-of-position risk to the setup (13.5).
2. 2.Front-opening enclosures don’t force your lighting onto a screen. See 13.10.
3. 3.Glass fronts show reflections. Solid, non-reflective side and back panels reduce the reflection-driven behaviors (glass surfing, nose rubbing) that glass tanks are notorious for. See 12.5.

13.10Glass tanks and screen tops

This is the practical reason the enclosure decision is a lighting decision, and it’s arithmetic rather than opinion.

A glass tank almost always ships with a full screen top, and the screen top is where your lighting has to go because there’s no other mounting option. 3.3 and 3.4 have already done the maths on what that costs.

UV. Screen tops block somewhere between a third and a half of the UV depending on the mesh, and the mounting height has to come down to compensate. An Arcadia ProT5 with a 12% tube sits 16–20 in above the animal with nothing in the way, and 12–14 in through a typical 35% screen. Look your own screen up in the blockage table in 3.3 rather than assuming, because the range there runs from 12% to 70%.

The weaker tubes are where a screen really bites. A 6% / 5.0 tube in a reflector fixture still works over a 35% screen, at 8–10 in. Over a 45% screen it cannot reach UVI 3 at any sensible distance, and neither can a Zoo Med hood carrying one. If your screen is at the heavy end, a 12% tube is the only realistic choice.

Infrared. Mesh blocks IR as well, so the correction calculation in 3.4 applies: divide the 300–350 W/m² target by the fraction that passes through. At 30% blockage you’re hunting for a bulb delivering 429–500 W/m² at your mounting distance instead of 300–350.

A glass tank doesn’t make correct lighting impossible. It narrows your equipment window considerably, fewer viable bulbs, less distance tolerance, a harder time hitting UVI 3–5 and 300–350 W/m² simultaneously at the same spot (3.6); and it does so on top of worse heat retention and reflection problems.

13.11Building your own

Building your own is legitimate, and often the only affordable route to something larger than 4 × 2 × 2. The failure modes are material safety, curing, and electrical work.

13.12Transport

The container

• , Sturdy, escape-proof, ventilated, easy to clean. A hard-sided plastic carrier or a lidded, ventilated plastic tub is ideal.
• , ⚠ Smaller is safer than larger. The animal should be able to turn around and lift its head, but the container should be snug enough that it can brace rather than slide and tumble when the car moves. Fill dead space with paper towel.
• , Line it with paper towel. No loose substrate, no decor, nothing that can shift and pin the animal.
• , Secure the container in the vehicle, seatbelt, or wedged in a footwell. An unsecured carrier on a seat becomes a projectile under braking.
• , Out of direct sunlight. A container in a sunbeam behind glass heats far past anything survivable, fast.

Temperature

• , Aim for a stable, moderate 75–85°F. Note that you’re aiming near the cool-side band in 3.7, not basking temperatures. The animal won’t be basking in a box; the goal is to keep it safely warm rather than to run its metabolism.
• , The car’s climate control is your primary tool. Set the cabin, then check the container.
• , Below about 55°F ambient, the night-heat threshold in 3.7; you need supplemental heat for the journey.
• , ⚠ Heat packs: barrier, always. Reptile-branded warmers used per the wrapper, placed on the opposite side of an insulated outer box from the animal’s container, with towels or newspaper between. Never in direct contact with the animal or its container. Contact heat packs cause burns, and a reptile in a box can’t move away from a heat source the way it can in an enclosure.
• , ⚠ Avoid improvised heat. Hot water bottles and disposable hand-warmer sachets are unstable and unsuitable. They spike, they cool unpredictably, and they leak.

Around the trip

• , Don’t feed immediately before traveling. Digestion needs basking heat (3.4), which the animal won’t have in transit, and a stressed dragon with a full stomach may regurgitate.
• , Minimize handling during the journey. Checking every ten minutes is worse for the animal than leaving it alone in a dark, warm, stable box.
• , Darkness is calming. A covered container beats a transparent one.
• , For a vet visit: bring the log (13.6) and, if a fecal exam is the reason for the trip, a fresh sample. Note the current bulb install date and your last UVI reading. “A 12% T5 installed in March, reading 4.2 UVI at 18 inches” is a completely different conversation from “yes, he has a UVB.”

13.13Leaving a dragon while you’re away

How long is acceptable depends almost entirely on age, because the feeding schedule in 4.1 does.

Before you go

• , ⚠ Timers on all lighting. The photoperiod can’t drift while you’re away. 3.7 sets the rule (all lights on during the day, all off at night) so put the whole day-lighting group on one timer and they can never fall out of sync. If you’re on a brumation-season schedule (7.1), set the timer to the correct current step.
• , A large, clean water bowl, filled the morning you leave.
• , A salad left out on the day of departure (4.3), and none after that unless a sitter is providing it. Old salad rotting in a warm enclosure is worse than no salad.
• , Somebody local who can physically get in, even if they aren’t doing daily care, in case of a power cut.

The sitter instruction sheet

Write it down. A sitter who has been told everything verbally has been told nothing.

13.14Power cuts

The order of operations, worst case first.

1. 1.Keep the enclosure closed. Every opening dumps the stored heat you’re trying to keep. Resist checking.
2. 2.Insulate from the outside. Blankets, towels and duvets over and around the enclosure, leaving ventilation openings clear. A PVC or wood enclosure holds usable heat for hours. A glass tank won’t (13.9). This is the moment the material choice pays for itself.
3. 3.Move the enclosure, or the animal, to the warmest room in the house, interior, away from exterior walls and windows.
4. 4.Reptile heat packs with a barrier, exactly as in 13.12. Insulated outer box, pack on the opposite side, towel or newspaper between, never in contact.
5. 5.If it runs past a day, relocate the animal to a friend or family member who has power. Transport per 13.12.

If you live somewhere outages are routine, the real answer is a battery backup. Camping-style power stations can run low-wattage heat sources for days on a charge, and some recharge from solar. A generator serves the same purpose. That is the difference between a plan and a scramble.

What to worry about, and what not to

• , Heat is the emergency. UVB isn’t. A few days without UVB is recoverable. A dragon held well below its temperature range is not. Don’t waste generator capacity on the UVB tube.
• , ⚠ Withhold food until heat is restored. Bearded dragons need basking heat to digest (3.4). Food sitting undigested in a cold dragon’s gut is a genuine problem, and a dragon that has just eaten is the worst one to lose heat on. Water stays available throughout.
• , A cool dragon will be dark and sluggish. Darkening in the cold is normal pigment behavior rather than distress (6.6). Pigment cells rise to the surface when the animal is cool.
• , Write the sequence on a card and tape it inside the enclosure stand. You won’t be reading this guide by torchlight.