Bearded Dragon Care - Setting Up the Enclosure

Holli Friedland: I am Holli Friedland, Program Director at the Mid-Atlantic Reptile Show and this is How to Care for a Bearded Dragon. Next we are going to show you how to set up the enclosure for your bearded dragon. First you need a sub straight material which is what's on the bottom of the cage.

Today we are going to use newspaper and you can use any kind of new paper. We get this unprinted newspaper but any newspaper will actually work. Some people use sand or sandy soil for their sub straight and that works fine too, but if you just use sand, you should feed your animal in a different enclosure, so that they don't swallow a lot of sand. After you have the sub straight down, you want to put your cage furniture in there and first you need to put your heating pad and that goes underneath the tank, so that the animal stays warm. Also we are going to have a heat lamp and the lamp will give UV light. You can either use florescent UV light or this is a incandescent UV light, which also are really great because they also give off heat, and you don't have to buy two different lamps. And this lamp is going to sit -- there is a screen part of the cage right here and the lamp is going to sit on that. And we are attaching it to this lamp stand, which you can buy if there is no way to secure the lamp on the top of the enclosure. If you have a flat aquarium, it can just sit on the top. Then you are going to need a hide box of some sort, which should actually be where the heating pad is and this gives that animal place to hide. You'll also need with bearded dragons, they need a basking area and the basking area should be underneath of where your light is. And with bearded dragons, they actually like to sit almost 900 from the ground. So you want to try to get a branch that is more at this angle than flat and they like to bask on that. You also need a thermometer, so you can see what the basking area, the temperature is, and you want the temperature about a 100 to 1050. You will also need a water bowl and this cage is a little bit small but it's for demonstration purposes so you can see everything you need. And the water bowl should be big enough that the breaded dragon can actually get in it and lay in it. Then you also want a food dish. Now, they eat a variety of food so you have the food dish for the vegetables and then the insects will just run around in there and that's how you set up the enclosure. Next we will talk about, how to choose the breaded dragon that's right for you.