For the pet lovers, the trending and loving creature is now bearded dragons. They are harmless and do not take up much space so apartment owners as well as home owners can easily keep one as their pet. If you are keeping a pair of bearded dragon and one of them happen to be female, then you must be aware of the situation when the female one is pregnant with eggs.
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When Bearded Dragon lay eggs:
You must know when the female bearded dragon is going to lay eggs for the first thing. It can lay eggs after mating the male bearded dragon or when they have reached the age of sexual maturity. Even if the female dragon is the only dragon that you have in a terrarium, then also you can see the dragon laying eggs.
The eggs will be infertile if the female one has not been with a male dragon in any recent time. This is a common practice among dragons to lay infertile eggs after a certain period of time.
They start laying eggs after they are 9 to 10 months of age. But there are exceptions, and some female bearded dragon lay eggs much after the time mentioned here, or some of them do not lay eggs at all in the whole life term.
Female dragons can lay fertile as well as infertile eggs, after they have met the male dragon. Female dragons can store sperms up to 1 year after mating, so do not be amazed when you see the female dragon laying eggs much after it has last met the partner. When they lay eggs in the terrarium, you are supposed to take care of those. You must take them away from the place and keep them in an incubator.
How many eggs do Bearded Dragon lay:
The healthy and fertile eggs will swell up with time. In fact they double up from their original size. The reason is, the embryo inside the egg grows and develops.
In a lot a female dragon can lay 15 to 30 eggs but all the eggs are produced in a single clutch. During the mating season a female dragon is capable of laying 2 to 4 clutches throughout.
How to handle the eggs that are laid on the substrate of the enclosure:
You must handle the eggs softly and with much care. The handling should be as less as possible, as you could be harming the unborn bearded dragons by touching the eggs too often. When the dragon lays clutch of eggs you may not know which ones are fertile and which ones are not.
Especially if the dragon has met in recent times or a few months back, then it is always more difficult to decide. You can candle the eggs, by putting a few eggs which are one or two week old under the flashlight. You can observe the interior of the egg against the powerful light. If you see the obscure formation of a body moving inside, then you can be sure that it is a clutch of fertile eggs.
Disease that can affect female dragon after laying eggs:
If your female bearded dragon has laid infertile eggs, which they do quite often, then there is chance of hypocalemia in the dragons’ body.
This is due to the loss of calcium which is obvious from the symptoms like weakened bone, teeth and also bone fractures. This is not a negligible disease and you should put more calcium powder in the food of the bearded dragon once it starts laying eggs.
During hypocalcemia you will also see the swelling, lump or tumor as well as deformity in the lower jaw bone. You must feed the dragon with proper and nutritious food so it stays healthy.
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