male+female=egg

Breeding

The sexual maturity of bearded dragons is reached at one year. It is strongly advised not to make a female reproduce before she is 18 months.

Once the age of sexual maturity is reached, the mating parade can begin!

The male shakes his head repeatedly vertically (eventually colours his neck in black): it means that the male wants to mate. The female will wave with one of her front legs as a sign of acceptance. He will then move quickly towards her, climb on her back, bite her neck, move aside, and introduce the hemipenis closest to the female’s cloaca to mate. Mating lasts no more than a few minutes.

The female will bear eggs for about a month. It is essential that during this period, the female is fed properly and that the additional calcium and vitamins are given regularly (see section "Feeding”). In the last few days, she will stop eating and will soon begin digging throughout the terrarium to find the perfect place to lay her eggs. In the terrarium, I put a cat litter box filled with earth or sand. The female lays her eggs usually late in the day and will cover them up. Once the female has finished laying the eggs and has left the litter box, I take the eggs, making sure not to turn them over. We must wait until the female has completely finished laying the eggs and left the litter box before taking the eggs to avoid stress. Then I put the eggs in the same position they were laid in a tray filled with vermiculite or perlite. I then place them in my incubator (see section "Incubator") at a temperature of 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit) and humidity of about 60%. Once a week I moisten the substrate (not the eggs!) with a syringe, and if there are any eggs which wilt, I remove them. During the incubation period, the eggs will grow by about one third.

After about two months, the eggs will begin to clutch and juveniles will point the tip of their nose! The hatching of the eggs takes place over a period of two to three days. I take the juveniles once the pogona vitticeps are completely out of their shell and the yolk sac is absorbed, and I place the bearded dragons in a small terrarium. They start eating after two or three days only, as before they are still fed by the yolk sac.