Hey guys, Heather here from Tye-Dyed Iguana and today we're going to teach you guys how to
help your female bearded dragon lay her eggs. Now we've done a video about the different signs that a
bearded dragon is gravid, but we've never actually shown you kind of what to do after you notice
that they're gravid, so. Let's go check that out. All right, so say you've got a female beardie like Miss
Ella here, and you notice that maybe she's slowed down eating, getting really restless, digging around
the cage very frantically, getting really restless and everything. Those are signs that they're
getting ready to lay eggs. Sometimes, especially when eggs are fertile, you can see them kind of
poking through their skin in their belly, and you can feel them inside their bellies too usually.
So now what do you do? You know your beardie's gravid and you know they're getting ready to lay eggs?
Well, that's what we're going to show you right now. Now a lot of people will just let their bearded
dragon dig in their cage and lay their eggs, but that's usually not the best thing to do for them.
A lot of times bearded dragons won't want to lay in their tank because it's just not the right
conditions for proper nest making. It's too hot, it's not in a nice cool space,
not very, uh, not deep, not nearly deep enough for them to feel comfortable laying their eggs.
Now when they've got infertile eggs, it's another matter. Like our bearded dragon Ella here,
she had some infertile eggs and she didn't want to lay them in her nest box that we made for her,
she wanted to lay them in here, but they were infertile. Most of the time though, when they're
infertile, or if they're fertile, they'll want to lay them somewhere else, and we're going to show
you that real quick. All right, so what you want to do is, is when your bearded dragon's ready to lay eggs,
you should always have a bin ready. We use a nice big bin like this. You want something that they can
feel comfortable walking around in, that's not too small. You want something that is big enough to fit
them and for them to be able to choose a spot to nest. As you can see here, we currently have
a bearded dragon in our nesting box. And what we use, we use a tropical mixed bedding. It's
got like coco coir in it, coco fiber, sphagnum moss, all sorts of good stuff. Nice, uh, it's nice
and damp too, so it sticks together and it won't like crumble or anything when they dig in it.
What you'll want to do is, you'll want to pour about, let's see, we got about five inches
of, uh, the tropical mix bedding in this bin. You'll want to put that in and add water so it's nice
and moist for them, but not too moist or else it's going to be soupy. We've always got a bin
on hand ready for our females, because we have a lot of female bearded dragons and it's that time
of the year. So, we'll use this bin for multiple bearded dragons to lay their eggs in. And we also
like to use a clear bin because it makes it easier to see where they've laid their eggs. If you don't
see them actually laying the eggs, but you you open it and see, oh they they're thin now, they
laid their eggs somewhere. Usually you can see them through the wall or if you just look underneath
you can see them. They usually lay them on the very bottom of the bin, right against the plastic.
So you'll usually be able to just tip this over a little bit, and look at the bottom and you'll
be able to see where the eggs are laid. You'll see, you'll actually see the eggs through the bin.
Now as far as how long we keep them in the bin, we put this little girl, this is one of our females,
she's very pregnant as you can see. I shouldn't say pregnant I should say gravid. You can see a
lumpy bump of an egg there. We put her in there this morning, and we're going to keep her there
all day and all night, and then tomorrow morning if she hasn't laid her eggs, we'll take her out
and we'll give her a one day break. We'll give her a break and put her back in her tank over there.
We never keep them in two nights in a row or two full days in a row, we only do one day at a time.
And it is, they'll be perfectly safe in there for one day and one night. They won't get sick
or anything, just make sure your room temperature is in the 70s and stuff, they'll do perfectly fine.
I know some people think you should only keep them in there for a few hours, but honestly
a lot of the bearded dragons, it takes them a lot longer than a few hours to want to lay their
eggs. Some like to do it only at night time when all the lights are off, when nobody's looking.
So yeah, I don't know how, if she's gonna lay her eggs today. Yeah, look at them all.
But yeah, just keep them in there overnight
and if they don't lay them by the morning just take them out and give them a break,
so. They'll be okay without food or water in there for one day, they'll be okay. Yeah, and you don't
want to disturb them while they're in there. I'm not disturbing her, uh, I'm not open, that's why I'm
not opening the bin to show you guys inside, because I don't want to disturb her at all.
Yeah, and once they've laid their eggs and everything, you'll usually notice because
usually they'll be kind of dirty, because when they fill the hole back in they usually get the
dirt all over their face and on their back and stuff from digging and everything, and they'll
be a lot skinnier than they were when you put them in, so. Once they finish laying their eggs,
all you gotta do is put them back in their tank. And just make sure you give them plenty of water
and plenty of food and everything, because they'll probably be very hungry once they get done laying.
Just make sure that whatever you feed them, their insect of choice, has calcium dust on it. That's
very important for after laying, because laying eggs takes a lot of calcium out of their bodies,
so you gotta replenish that. And of course they'll need water to get rehydrated too.
And if you ever notice your bearded dragon having trouble laying their eggs or something, sometimes
a short soak, a nice warm soak in a little water bath will help them.
And if your bearded dragon just seems to not be wanting to lay their eggs at all,
depending on how long they hold them you might have to take them to a vet because some bearded
dragons, they will get impacted and they won't be able to pass their eggs. So, you just gotta look
out for that. So yeah, that's about it as far as what you can do to help your bearded dragon lay eggs.
The method of using the nest box for them to dig in, when we use it, we use it here
at our shop, and we've had lots of success with our bearded dragons laying eggs in them.
We usually see the ones that are digging a lot, you can really feel the eggs,
they'll start digging within like 30 minutes to an hour after being put in there, so it works really
well, and they feel really comfortable digging in a nest box compared to laying in their cage.
So yeah, thanks for watching everybody and we'll see you next time.