Well another week has passed and the dragons are still alive, (Phew! Wipe forehead). We have had a couple of roughspots but overall they have been resolved with very little drama.
Just after Christmas all the children were sick and so very little interest was taken in the animals (in fact at one point I even had to feed the dragons (gasp!)) However by Friday Liam was a bit better and greeted me at 6am with the worrying news that "All the crickets are too big." I told him to feed them some vegetables and not to worry about it for now and then promptly went back to sleep :-). The morning moved on and I eventually got up and Adam left for a day of geocaching (by the way Adam's blog is at www.tgfblogged.blogspot.com ). Around lunchtime Liam comes back with the statement about the crickets and I properly assess the situation. If the crickets are too big (heaven help me if we choked a dragon with a too big cricket) what are we going to feed them??????? Adam is away with the car and everything is shut from tomorrow until next Tuesday! ARGGHH!!!! What will do?
I quickly call our cricket supplier to confirm my fears and I am right, no crickets until Tuesday, so I order some EXTRA small crickets for then and wonder what in the world we will do. Then Liam comes out and says "don't worry Mum I solved it. I just take the big crickets and snap their head off and then feed the dragons both the halves ", (YUCK!!) "and then any legs that fell off I just drop in the cage and they gobble them up" (double YUCK!!). I quickly rang the breeder we bought them from (they foolishly told us we could call for advice :-)) and confirmed that this was fine as long as the dragons would actually eat them like that. No worries about that - they seem to eat anything :-).
If I am worried about anything now, it is whether bearded dragons can be overfed? They are very well loved and every time Liam enters his room, he admires them and then feeds them. He will then come out and say that Steve (or Terri) wasn't really into the cricket he offered him. When I quizz him I realize it is because 'Steve' has already eaten 5 crickets this morning, PLUS some mealworms, had just been sprayed with water (to keep him hydrated) and is probably freezing and probably wants nothing more than to just sit under the heat lamp and warm up. Nonetheless the baby dragons are thriving and growing. All our other creatures are alive and well too, though Samuel again made a break for it after removing the staples from his mesh. This time he made it all the way to the lounge room (5 meters). I definately think we will have to reinforce his cage and change his name to Samsom :-).
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Well now that Christmas is over, I at last have a chance to update my blog. Regarding the dragons if you have been keeping up with Liam's blog http://liamsdragons.blogspot.com/ then you know that life has been busy. He blew up the plate of food in the microwave, has taught his dragons to take food from his fingers and has now taught them to jump for food from his fingers. I am very proud of him but have to admit that the time has been a bit stressful.
Along with blowing up the plate in the microwave went a lesson in heating solid objects and why they explode, also one on power levels in the microwave (ie when we defrost one kilo of meat on defrost setting for 20 mins you can't scale that down to defrosting 1 tabs food for 3 mins on high). Thankfully the microwave was able to be cleaned up and still works.
Along with spilling the expensive calcium powder all over the table, went a lesson on how to approach dusting the crickets without risking spilling it and putting the lid back on the jar STRAIGHT away.
Along with finding a cricket on the run in my kitchen went a lesson in not playing with the crickets and keeping them covered.
Along with rearranging the tank setup went another lesson in making sure that all the items added to the cage are cleaned thoroughly to kill any parasites on them. Hopefully we won't have to learn about treating mites because of that lesson :-).
Overall though, I would have to say that the whole household has fallen in love with our new residents. Both Adam and I can hardly walk past Liam's room without checking on them and giving them a pat :-)
But I can't talk about the lizards with mentioning the two other new residents of our place. Sticky the Stick Insect and Samuel the Rhinocerous Beetle. Sticky joined us the same day as the dragons and is growing rapidly. We have ascertained that he is SHE and will grow to be quite large so that will be interesting to watch. Samuel joined us yesterday after he was rescued from Adam's parents pond. He is quite large and quite funny and hisses at us constantly. We brought him home in a container (much to Mum's relief as she hates insects) and he is now installed in a styrofoam container of his own. Rhinocerous beetles are the strongest animals in the world, and Samuel proved this when we found him outside his cage. He had pushed the staples that held the mesh on his cage apart and crawled out only to fall on to his back on the floor and stay there waving his legs about. Needless to say his mesh is now more securely attached :-) though my admiration for his strength is strongly tinged with humour at his ability to get his stuck.
Overall as far as I can tell, all the animals in our care are safe and well fed, at the moment and as Adam says, for a family that has no pets, we sure have a lot of animals at the moment :-)
Along with blowing up the plate in the microwave went a lesson in heating solid objects and why they explode, also one on power levels in the microwave (ie when we defrost one kilo of meat on defrost setting for 20 mins you can't scale that down to defrosting 1 tabs food for 3 mins on high). Thankfully the microwave was able to be cleaned up and still works.
Along with spilling the expensive calcium powder all over the table, went a lesson on how to approach dusting the crickets without risking spilling it and putting the lid back on the jar STRAIGHT away.
Along with finding a cricket on the run in my kitchen went a lesson in not playing with the crickets and keeping them covered.
Along with rearranging the tank setup went another lesson in making sure that all the items added to the cage are cleaned thoroughly to kill any parasites on them. Hopefully we won't have to learn about treating mites because of that lesson :-).
Overall though, I would have to say that the whole household has fallen in love with our new residents. Both Adam and I can hardly walk past Liam's room without checking on them and giving them a pat :-)
But I can't talk about the lizards with mentioning the two other new residents of our place. Sticky the Stick Insect and Samuel the Rhinocerous Beetle. Sticky joined us the same day as the dragons and is growing rapidly. We have ascertained that he is SHE and will grow to be quite large so that will be interesting to watch. Samuel joined us yesterday after he was rescued from Adam's parents pond. He is quite large and quite funny and hisses at us constantly. We brought him home in a container (much to Mum's relief as she hates insects) and he is now installed in a styrofoam container of his own. Rhinocerous beetles are the strongest animals in the world, and Samuel proved this when we found him outside his cage. He had pushed the staples that held the mesh on his cage apart and crawled out only to fall on to his back on the floor and stay there waving his legs about. Needless to say his mesh is now more securely attached :-) though my admiration for his strength is strongly tinged with humour at his ability to get his stuck.
Overall as far as I can tell, all the animals in our care are safe and well fed, at the moment and as Adam says, for a family that has no pets, we sure have a lot of animals at the moment :-)
Thursday, December 21, 2006
The real version :-)
Liam has been saving for 2 years to get these bearded dragons and at last the time has arrived. So off we go to the breeder to get the information and a quick look at the eggs. While the kids are happily patting and holding the bearded dragons I am interogating the poor breeder. An hour and a half later I come out with 3 pages of notes (that go both horizontally and vertically all over the pages) and a list of essentials a mile long. Overall it had been an amazing visit but we needed a tank, spotlight & UV bulb (connected of course), log and rock (sterilised of course), temp reader, calcium supplement, water sprayer etc. Not to mention Crickets and mealworms and homes for the crickets and mealworms AARRGGHH!!!!!!
Anyway a couple of weeks pass and we are mainly set up (minus the water sprayer that had broken from overuse in the week we had had it) only to find out that our tank is too big for hatchlings. So after an impulse buy on eBay (the night before we are to pick up the dragons), we do a rush trip to Richlands in Christmas traffic. With all the twisting and turning Kate gets carsick :-( I am in the middle of two solid lines of traffic on Milton Road and we have no bowl in the car, so frantically grabbing the rags we had packed to protect the tank, we bundle them up and they absorb the worst of it. We arrive get the tank and head home. Of Course Kate get's sick again (more rags) and about 2 hours after we set out we have a small tank and a pile of smelly rags. Home again I set Liam to clean the tank while I deal with the rags and then I go to check on the light and heating system my dad rigged up for us and low and behold it doesn't fit!!!!!
Nontheless thinking that it will all somehow work out we head off to pick up the dragons. Liam had a ball and we arrived home with even more instructions. "Don't feed them too big a crickets as they can choke and check that they are feeding properly!" No problem, I think to myself, we got small crickets and have read everything we can get our hands on, this will be fine. So we come home put them in their new small tank, lie the light system over it sideways with some of both lights over the tank and think way to go, we made it. I knew we would have to change the lights, but figured, hey, these creatures survive in the wild they will survive a couple of days in less than ideal environment, right? WRONG!!!!!
This morning Liam gets up and feeds them some more crickets. he comments that the one we call a girl (you can't tell at this age) doesn't like crickets, she just isn't interested. I find this a little worrying so start to check on her. In my observations of her I realise that even though the lights were over the cage no heat was going into the cage. By this time she is looking really listless and pale and I am starting to stress. So with a lot of running about and balancing stools, boxes and pieces of wood we rigged up a system allowing the heat light to point directly down onto the rock in the cage. We put them in the heat and watch anxiously. After about 5 mins of stillness the pale dragon jumped up on the log, twitched violently and regurgitated a cricket. (YUCK!!) It seems that dragons need heat to digest their food, both underbelly and above so with the lack of heat, she was in real trouble. After that she seemed a little better but still off her food (Stress, Stress). I suddenly realise that now that the heat was working we should check out the temp to check it isn't too hot (a dragon cage has to been quite hot one end, and cooler the other so they can regulate their temperature). So I go get the new fangled temperature reader we bought, eventually work out how it works and put it in the tank. A quick check ten minutes later and aarrgghh!!! It is TOO HOT!!!! so we move the heat light away from the rock and check it again in half an hour....now it is TOO COLD!!!! so we procede on an hour of moving the light in 2 cm increments until at last it is the right temp. PHEW!!! By this time our girl has darkened up in colour and was a lot more alert (much to my relief) and so ends day one in the life and times of our bearded dragons.
Anyway a couple of weeks pass and we are mainly set up (minus the water sprayer that had broken from overuse in the week we had had it) only to find out that our tank is too big for hatchlings. So after an impulse buy on eBay (the night before we are to pick up the dragons), we do a rush trip to Richlands in Christmas traffic. With all the twisting and turning Kate gets carsick :-( I am in the middle of two solid lines of traffic on Milton Road and we have no bowl in the car, so frantically grabbing the rags we had packed to protect the tank, we bundle them up and they absorb the worst of it. We arrive get the tank and head home. Of Course Kate get's sick again (more rags) and about 2 hours after we set out we have a small tank and a pile of smelly rags. Home again I set Liam to clean the tank while I deal with the rags and then I go to check on the light and heating system my dad rigged up for us and low and behold it doesn't fit!!!!!
Nontheless thinking that it will all somehow work out we head off to pick up the dragons. Liam had a ball and we arrived home with even more instructions. "Don't feed them too big a crickets as they can choke and check that they are feeding properly!" No problem, I think to myself, we got small crickets and have read everything we can get our hands on, this will be fine. So we come home put them in their new small tank, lie the light system over it sideways with some of both lights over the tank and think way to go, we made it. I knew we would have to change the lights, but figured, hey, these creatures survive in the wild they will survive a couple of days in less than ideal environment, right? WRONG!!!!!
This morning Liam gets up and feeds them some more crickets. he comments that the one we call a girl (you can't tell at this age) doesn't like crickets, she just isn't interested. I find this a little worrying so start to check on her. In my observations of her I realise that even though the lights were over the cage no heat was going into the cage. By this time she is looking really listless and pale and I am starting to stress. So with a lot of running about and balancing stools, boxes and pieces of wood we rigged up a system allowing the heat light to point directly down onto the rock in the cage. We put them in the heat and watch anxiously. After about 5 mins of stillness the pale dragon jumped up on the log, twitched violently and regurgitated a cricket. (YUCK!!) It seems that dragons need heat to digest their food, both underbelly and above so with the lack of heat, she was in real trouble. After that she seemed a little better but still off her food (Stress, Stress). I suddenly realise that now that the heat was working we should check out the temp to check it isn't too hot (a dragon cage has to been quite hot one end, and cooler the other so they can regulate their temperature). So I go get the new fangled temperature reader we bought, eventually work out how it works and put it in the tank. A quick check ten minutes later and aarrgghh!!! It is TOO HOT!!!! so we move the heat light away from the rock and check it again in half an hour....now it is TOO COLD!!!! so we procede on an hour of moving the light in 2 cm increments until at last it is the right temp. PHEW!!! By this time our girl has darkened up in colour and was a lot more alert (much to my relief) and so ends day one in the life and times of our bearded dragons.
Introduction and why!
Today my son started his own blog to record the arrival and life with two baby bearded dragons. As I was reading his blog which I think is wonderful (of course) I was having a private laugh to myself at how varied his brief descriptions were from my memories of the day/s leading up to this event. So I decided to keep a concurrent blog sharing the behind the scene details about this new adventure. Of course being a chatterbox, I will probably record my perspective of life in general in the coming months but such is life.
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