Lots of people have bearded dragons, yet information on the website on their growth pattern is scarce. You could spend hours digging through the forums and not find much. When thinking about the bearded dragon growth pattern, it’s important to consider age, weight, and length. Because they grow at a different rate according to their age. Also, shorter beardie could weigh less than a longer beardie, and that females and males have different growth patterns. Here we present the growth pattern of our female beardie Daisy. Keep in mind that Daisy’s growth pattern may not represent the growth pattern of all bearded dragons. However, it can still be useful to compare with your own bearded dragon’s growth pattern.
Daisy arrived at our home on December 26, 2018. She was a tiny little thing weighing only 9 grams (Figure 1). During the first couple of days, she had a really difficult time adapting to her new environment and was also sick on arrival (story coming soon).
Figure 1. Daisy on a scale showing a weight of 9 grams
Unlike many baby bearded dragons shown in videos, where they simply devour Dubia roaches and other insects by the cupful, our Daisy only took in one or two insects a day. However, as she is reared to back to health, her appetite increased steadily and so did her weight (Figures 2).
Figure 2. From top to bottom, Daisy on a scale weighing 29 and 62 grams respectively.
Since her tank is bioactive, we planted several bearded dragon safe plants in there including Golden Pothos (Epipremnum aureum) and Wandering Jew (Tradescantia zebrine). Daisy occasionally nibbled at the plants but was always eager to eat her insects first. The majority of her insect diet consisted of dusted Dubia roaches (Blaptica dubia), with Black Soldier Fly larvae (Hermetia illucens) as a calcium-rich treat. She steadily grew and was shedding almost weekly (Figures 3).
Figure 3. Top, Daisy on a scale weighing 157 grams; Middle, Daisy is getting too big for the scale, we had to use a cardboard box to hold her; Bottom, Daisy basking on a stone looking happy.
Because she was so little and sick in the beginning, we felt compelled to baby her and gave her as much food as she wanted. Her weight gain after she regained her health was exponential, so was her length. Her weight gain rose the sharpest between day 100 to day 230 (Figure 4). And her length increased sharply from day 30 to day 130 (Figure 5).
Figure 4. Daisy's weight gain over days with markings showing peak and highest increase.
Figure 5. Daisy's length gain over days with the maximum length reached around day 400.
Her weight peaked at 700 grams (a bit high!) around day 482. Right after that, we decided to reduce her intake of insects and increase her intake of vegetables to control her weight because she was certainly heavier than normal. In contrast, a wild adult bearded dragon would weigh between 230 g to 520 g (Oonincx et al. 2015). All in all, our Daisy is still very active and is always looking for food, we have to try very hard to resist the urge to feed her too much.
A better way to look at Daisy’s growth rate aside from raw length and raw weight data is to use a relative growth rate (Figure 6). Which is calculated as (ln (final weight) – ln (initial weight))/age. This effectively shows the rate Daisy grows over time, the higher values would indicate faster growth, and the lower values indicate slower growth. As the graph shows, the fastest growth happens before day 200 then it levels off. This makes sense because, in the wild, most reptiles are more vulnerable to predators when they are small. The chances of them getting eaten by other animals drastically reduce as they become bigger.
Figure 6. Daisy's relative growth rate over days. Highest increase are before day 200, then the rate of growth becomes consistent over time.
Of course, diet plays a huge role in bearded dragon growth patterns. A diet with more vegetables will certainly lead to less fat gain, which may lead to a slower growth rate. Our Daisy ate more insects than plants growing up, which may explain her weight peaking at 700g. However, she is a rather long beardie and even at 700g, she has no trouble running, climbing, and being curious at everything. Hopefully, for the sake of her future health, we can bring her weight down to a more manageable level with a balanced diet and regular exercise,.
I hope the information presented here is useful to you and please feel free to share your experiences with your beardie! We would love to hear about them. Thank you for reading.
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