Brumating, or sick?

Every autumn the same post: “my dragon has stopped eating and sleeps all day — is he dying?” Usually not. But the early signs of brumation are also the early signs of illness, and the difference is one you can't see by eye. A brumating dragon is slow; a sick dragon is weak. This runs what you can see, the season, the age and two weigh-ins through that table, and sends anything in the wrong column to a vet.

Where is it in the cycle?
How old is it?
What season is it where you live?
Anything change in the last few weeks — a new tank, new lights, a different diet, a move?
Has it had a fecal (parasite) test in the past year?
The baseline. Leave it blank if you never took one.
A kitchen scale is fine — grams, not ounces. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Compared with last week's weigh-in, today is…
Finally, look it over. Tick anything you see.
Nothing ticked means: eyes clear and not sunken, mouth clean and closed, tail base full, belly not swollen, and it lifts its head and pushes back when you pick it up.

Through the brumation season

Slow or weak comes down to the weigh-ins. Beardie Days keeps them.

  1. The check sorts what you can see into slow or weak. Anything in the wrong column goes to a vet.
  2. Brumating? Keep weighing weekly. Log each weight in grams, with a dated note — “went under Oct 12”, “first greens Feb 3”.
  3. Next autumn, you know this dragon’s pattern. Last year’s dip and wake-up are on its record, not in a forum post.
Beardie Days profile for a dragon called Mango with weight, length, age, life stage and notes
Weight and notes, per dragonThe weekly number that tells slow from weak.
Beardie Days photo reminders screen showing three dragons due a photo
A nudge for each dragonPhoto reminders, so weeks under don’t pass unrecorded.
Beardie Days list of three bearded dragons with ages in days
Each one’s own seasonDragons brumate differently; each keeps its own history.
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How this works

It's the table from our bearded dragon brumation guide, asked as questions. The guide puts seven rows side by side — weight, eyes, mouth and nose, body, response, last stool, timing — with a healthy-brumation column and a something-is-wrong column, and one rule underneath: if anything lands in the right-hand column, it isn't brumation — book a reptile vet. The five things you can tick are the right-hand column's five visible rows. Season and age are the timing row. The two weigh-ins are the weight row, which is the only one with a number in it.

So the check doesn't score anything or weigh signs against each other. One tick, one out-of-season slowdown, one dragon under a year, one weigh-in past the red line: any of those on its own routes to a vet, in the order the guide gives them. Only a clean sweep gets the caretaking panel — the pre-brumation checklist if it's just slowing down, the weekly routine if it's asleep, the wake-up steps if it's surfacing. And even the clean panel won't tell you your dragon is fine, because the guide's whole point is that you can't tell that by eye. What it will tell you is that nothing you can see points away from brumation, and what to do this week.

Where the numbers come from

Both weight cut-offs are the guide's. The red line is around 10% of pre-brumation body weight — “a 450 g dragon that drops below roughly 405 g needs a vet visit” — and the healthy figure is that a well-hydrated dragon ends brumation within one or two percent of where it started, having lost “a few grams over the whole sleep”. The check draws the red line for your dragon from the baseline you enter, and treats anything under 2% as drift.

One thing on this page is ours rather than the guide's, and the panel labels it where it's used: what to do between those two figures. A dragon 5% down is past what a healthy sleep usually costs and not yet at the line, and the guide's own routine supplies the answer — a warm shallow bath, then weigh again next week — but the guide doesn't put a number on where that band starts. We start it at 2%, because that's where its “one or two percent” ends. The other rule it gives is the one that overrides everything: a dragon losing steadily week over week is a vet visit before it reaches the line, because the trend is the warning. That's why the check asks how today compares with last week.

This is general husbandry guidance for a central bearded dragon, not veterinary advice. When in doubt, a reptile vet beats a forum — and beats this page.

If you're not sure, weigh it

The two mistakes aren't symmetrical. A vet visit for a dragon that turns out to be brumating costs you an afternoon and a consultation fee. A sick dragon left to “sleep it off” under shortened lights, over a gut that wasn't emptied, for three months, costs a lot more. Every tie on this page breaks towards the vet for that reason, and every panel ends with the same instruction: same scale, same day, once a week, and write it down.