Fat Bearded Dragon (How To Help Your Dragon Lose Weight?)

Can you overfeed a bearded dragon? Definitely yes. Bearded dragons are just like any other pet, some owners dote on them so much with extra food and treat that they soon wind up with an overweight bearded dragon. 

This article intends to cover every aspect of this scenario, including what healthy dragon weight is, how to tell if your bearded dragon is fat, how to distinguish a fat bearded dragon from a pregnant one and, most helpful of all, tips and guidelines for helping you slim an obese bearded dragon down to a healthy weight.

The Baseline Health of a Bearded Dragon

While every bearded dragon is unique, there is some standardization when it comes to the bearded dragon growth rate. 

A baby bearded dragon enters this world weighing no more than a single ounce and will eventually develop to weigh between 9 and 24 ounces [255 and 680 grams]; some outlier records have reached as much as 1 3/4 pounds [794 grams]. 

After 6 months of life, the average bearded dragon weight falls anywhere between 3.5 and 4 ounces [99 and 113 grams]. 

While bearded dragons exhibit quite a bit of variation in their individual weights, partly due to their total body length, bearded dragon size at 1 year of age tends to fall between 10.5 to 14 ounces [300 to 400 grams].

If the weight of a dragon exceeds 30 ounces [850 grams], chances are high that you have reached a problematic level of dragon weight gain; even bearded dragon weight exceeding 27 ounces [765 grams] is likely to be a health issue for any dragon less than 22″ to 24″ long.

“What is Qualified as ‘Fat’ for Bearded Dragons?”

You will never meet a fat bearded dragon in the wild. Juveniles will consume a single, decent-sized insect for their entire day to offset the energy used to catch it. 

Bearded dragons know how to self-regulate their diet; wild adult males can get by just fine on nothing but plants, using the energy generated to travel their personal territory.

Captive dragons, by contrast, are given all the food they could eat at once, sometimes multiple instances each day. When you combine this excess of food with the “solved” problem of them not needing to move much if at all, the end result is a fatty bearded dragon. 

Some people call bearded dragons lazy, but that behavior is simply their instinctual understanding that energy should only be spent when it is called for; a doting owner means the dragon does not need to do much to get food.

As this article has already pointed out, there are many variables that go into a dragon’s development. In order to give a better understanding of these animals’ development, here is a chart made by the owner of multiple dragons. 

Researching this sort of information, most owners are more concerned with length instead of weight; this may play into how prominent obesity is among pet dragons.

“How Can I Distinguish If My Bearded Dragon is Obese or Just Malnourished?”

While this is a good question to ask, the ease of confirming one or the other is not. Malnutrition is easy to gauge with a few bits of information.

• Do its ribs or other bony anatomy stick out to an obvious degree?
• Is its spine easily found or appear elevated?
• Have its fat pads become sunken in? Bearded dragon fat pads are the squishy part of the dragon’s head, located right behind its eyes. The fat pad of a bearded dragon is analogous to the hump of a camel, serving as an emergency supply of energy. In the dragon’s case, it may draw upon the fat stored within its pads if it somehow risks starving or if it undergoes brumation.
• Has it lost at least 10% of its total body weight in a short amount of time?
• Does its head appear over-sized for its body?
• Is their skin loose?

It is important to remember that bearded dragons, like most other reptiles, undergo a metabolic process called brumation; brumation tends to burn a lot of energy and is perfectly normal. Gauging if your bearded dragon has become obese is mostly some guesswork from assessing the following pieces of information and evidence.

• Does it move around enough to burn off the energy given by the food it eats?
• How often and for how long does it eat?
• How rich in fat is its diet?
• Is its belly the overwhelmingly largest part of its body? Does it drag its gut everywhere as it moves?
• Is the base of its tail exceptionally thick?
• Can you not find its ribs or spine?
• Does it have a noticeable set of jowls, fat pads or abdomen?
• Do its arms feature bulging pockets of fat to the rear of its limbs?

If you have answered “yes” to any of these questions, chances are likely that you have an obese dragon in your care. Notably, a dragon’s first reservoir of body fat is located at the base of its tail; a fatty tail means a fatty dragon.

“What If She’s Just Pregnant?”

While there is some overlap between a pregnant bearded dragon and an overweight one, there are two tells that indicate your bearded dragon is carrying eggs, even if those eggs are infertile.

1. She seems extremely skittish and resistant to being handled.
2. If you can handle her, you may feel the eggs as some bumps along the rear underbelly. These bumps are obvious near the sides. Understandably, an infertile clutch will contain few eggs.

Health Problems in Overweight Reptiles

An overweight dragon can suffer from a variety of health problems beyond the obvious reduced lifespan. Some of the more notable problems to consider are the chances of weakened limbs, organ problems, especially within the liver, and dystocia in gravid females.

• A dragon’s body is designed to carry a healthy bearded dragon’s weight; excess poundage means the dragon has to work harder to move. That extra effort risks weakening the dragon’s bones and joints.
• Organ problems can occur when the dragon releases its excess fat into the body, abreacting with other organs.
• Dystocia is a condition where the normal path taken by eggs on their way out of the mother’s body is distorted or even obstructed, resulting in a difficult process.
• While it is mild, it can be distressing to hear the frequent gasping sounds of an overweight dragon that has become lazy from inactivity.

Working Off the Weight

One of the most important things to consider when working slimming any reptile is their slower metabolisms; progress will be slow-going. With that said, there are several things you can do to trim your dragon down to a healthy weight.

Re-Assess Your Feeding Frequency

Here is the general feeding frequency:

• Young dragons (6 months old and younger) should be fed a mixture of greens and proteins 2-3 times a day.
• Juvenile dragons (6 and 12 months old) should be fed once a day.
• Adult dragons (those over a year old) should be fed three to four times a week.

To find out more about feeding and diet, visit our full comprehensive feeding guide for bearded dragons here.

Change How They Get Food

1. Putting all of the dragon’s food in a bowl means they only have to go to one spot to eat. It also means that they can cram more food into their mouth each time. Instead of using a feeding bowl or just stacking up the food so it is easy for the dragon to enjoy a one-spot feast, consider erratically placing their food over a large plate; not only will this reduce how much the dragon can get with a single bite, the need to move around to completely fill up will get the dragon to burn some of its obvious excess energy reserves and increase the amount of time it spends eating. The better you can space out your dragon’s food, the better things will go–with reason; a tank that is only double the size of your dragon is not going to offer you much room to spread out its food.
2. Since bearded dragons are omnivorous and its good to get them toe at greens, consider offering your dragon its leafy greens in the form of a cluster that has been tied up together. Simply stick the leaves in such a way that it looks like it might be naturally growing from whatever you affix it to, be it a rock in their vivarium or along a tree branch. This not only helps cut down on dragon obesity but also gives a small sense of what a bearded dragon’s natural environment is like, extending into a happier and more active dragon.
3. Offer fats only in the morning. Fat gives a dragon energy so it makes sense to only give them their most energy-rich foods in the morning. Giving larva or other fatty food late at night will only lead to a fraction of their energy being used by the dragon while the rest gets converted into body fat as it sleeps.
4. Instead of dicing up their vegetables, consider chopping them up into rough slices. The extra effort involved in eating them means the dragon will take longer, use more energy and sooner realize when it is full.
5. Change things around within the dragon’s enclosure so that is has a change for engage in foraging behavior and hunting down insects. Remember to ensure that live insects are eaten before leaving the area; some prey, like crickets, can actually turn hostile and attack a dragon.
6. Consider offering your dragon its food via tongs, raising the food just high enough that the dragon has to exert some effort to reach.

Change Their Diet

The most obvious solution to changing a dragon’s diet is to reduce how much it eats. While every dragon’s age, sex and biological activity influence what it will eat and the quantity of that food, it is important to show some flexibility in reducing portion sizes.

1. Do not engage in daily feedings. Non-reproducing adults do just fine eating every other day.
2. Trim the fat. Feeder worms are actually fat-rich insect larvae. If you have beetle larvae, let them transform into beetles and use the beetles as dragon chow; a large portion of the larval fat is used to transition into beetles, resulting in beetles having half the fat content of their larval forms.
3. Trim sugars. Cut back on how much fruit you give your dragon and make up for the difference with dark greens, flowers and gut-loaded insects.
4. Consider a daily regimen of dark greens, only offering insects and other food every other day. Another approach is to just cut your dragon off from food for 3-5 days.
5. While many owners feel 15 minutes is a sufficient feeding time, feedings should rarely exceed five minutes.
6. Provided your dragon is only troubled by its excess body weight, don’t worry if it ignores any changes to its regular diet. It will eventually adjust to the new food and eating routine.

Induce Brumation

Brumation is analogous to hibernation and practiced by reptiles when food is scarce and the temperature is appropriate. Brumation causes the dragon’s activity level to plummet, sustaining itself off stored fats. While this is great for shedding fat, it is not a good idea to induce brumation with young dragons; doing so can risk stunting their development. Always check with your vet before inducing brumation conditions; you wouldn’t want your dragon to brumate if it he picked up an unnoticed parasite or was too young.

Begin an Exercise Routine

While changing your dragon’s diet to incorporate healthier fare is a fine step, upping its daily energy expenditure is just as important.

• One of the most basic steps to take is to add more climbable obstacles to your dragon’s tank.
• Incorporate swimming into their bath routine. Since dragons normally require 1-2 baths each week, consider filling the tub, up to the dragon’s knee and elbow level, with water that is roughly 80°F [26°C]. Splashing is fine exercise and you may even want to fill different portions of the tub to different depths; your dragon will be inclined to swim from the shallow side to the deep side. Just remember to watch your dragon.
• Watch your tank’s temperature and make sure it is accurate; improper temperatures will just cause your dragon to become lazy or begin brumation.
• Encourage your dragon to move about your room or over your body.
• Consider exercise toys. Exercise is more than just physical activity and giving your dragon agency over when it plays with a toy will only improve its well-being. One notable toy for lizards is a ball filled with insects; as the lizard knocks the ball around, the bugs fall into eating range.
• A lidded, transparent, plastic box filled with a healthy serving of insects is a suitable way of giving your dragon a workout; the dragon sees the yummy food but “something” keeps getting in the way of its mouth. After your dragon spends a few minutes trying to figure things out, feel free to reward its efforts with the box’s payload.

Give Your Dragon a Detox Session

If your poor dragon has progress beyond overweight and is properly obese, it would be a good idea to prevent the chances of fatty liver disease. To this end, either milk thistle or serrapeptase are recommended solutions; the former is an herb and the latter is an enzyme. 

Both of these substances are known to bolster liver health, cleaning your dragon’s blood and its liver at the same time. 

What’s even better is that you can give these substances to a dragon that is less-than-obese as a preventative measure. Notably, the dosage for these substances in a bearded lizard are exceptionally small (15-25 mg/kg) so the practical amount is to use nothing more than a pinch, just as if you were using salt in a cooking recipe, on either a daily basis or every other day.

Do Not Ignore the Vet

No matter how much you love and care for your dragon, it is never a good idea to go without consulting a vet for at least once a year for a up. 

Most veterinarians study how to care for a variety of animals, not just the ones that have fur and warm blood. 

A proper veterinarian can even highlight things to watch out for with your dragon and let you know when it is a good time to be mindful of egg-laying or if your dragon is developing at a normal rate.