Well, it's been a little over a week, eight days to be exact, that my two little bearded dragons have been living inside their new home. I'm still not sure what sex they are but I have a feeling that the smaller of the two is a female. The male (guessing at this point) took a few days to adjust to the large enclosure (120 gallon 4'x2'x2' aquarium) but the female took to her new home the very first day. The first 5 days I exclusively fed them live crickets with a few wax worms mixed in but have just recently added fruits and vegetables to their diet. It figures that the female hates her greens (at this point) and the male eats veggies right from my hand.
I picked up these little guys right before I had a few days off of work so I started out feeding them 3 times a day. Once I get back to work, they'll have to make do with feeding twice a day (morning and evening). Crickets make up most of their diet and I expect it to stay this way until they're about a year old. Once they're fully mature their diet will consist of an even split between live food (crickets, wax worms, meal worms, etc...) and fruits and vegetables. I have read that baby dragons grow a half inch every week and I can tell that my little dragons have grown at least that over the 8 days.
As you have seen with my first post, I added a few photos of their first day as new pets. About two days ago, I set up a little dragon studio with a light tent box that I use for product photography. Bearded Dragons are extremely easy to photograph because as long as they don't see a cricket, they don't move all that much. The photos listed in this blog were taken with a Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro lens mounted on a Canon 5D Mark II.
Macro photography offers viewers the ability to really see the beauty of things up close. When viewed at 100% (on the High Resolution Gallery), you can see every scale in detail and also the bearded dragons sharp claws that are used for climbing. Look closer and you can see little spikes running along each toe of the dragon. No wonder why these guys can climb structures with ease.
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