how do you breed water dragons

[Zippy]

How do you breed water dragons?

[Pooka]

Tricia has a great set of pages setup for just such a question. Anyone interested in breeding there water dragons should check this url out. It covers all the basics.

www.icomm.ca/dragon/breeding.htm

As I have not bred water dragons I have no personal experience to relate but other members have bred dragons and may be able to add a tip here and there.

[dragosmom]

They usually breed from Oct-Feb or so (winter months.) Reduce lighting gradually from 12-14 hrs to 10 hrs and at the same time reduce daytime temps by about 10F. This encourages breeding. Up your females food, calcium and vitamin intake. The male will grab the female by her nuchal crest and attempt to mate. He may bite her and cause her to bleed. She may need to be separated to heal if he is too aggressive. Some people also remove the female for a couple of weeks after temps have been reduced. Gradually up your daylight times and temps after 2-3 months.

[Zippy]

I heard they breed right after you start increasing the hours of light they get a day after you decrease it.

[dragosmom]

Mine are not old enough to mate yet so I do not know if that information is correct. It seems like it could be a valid indicator of upcoming weather for the CWD. I have read that they only need to mate once in order for all of the subsequent clutches of eggs to be fertile from the female for that particular season.

[Jimi]

I do reduce day time hours down to 11 and i bring the temp down 6 degrees and my male goes crazy for mating. When i have 1 female in the cage with my male he will get to the point where he will make her bleed and becomes really realy aggresive towards her but with 2 females in there its not that big of a deal he still bullys them a little bit but nothin serious.

[dragosmom]

Thanks for that info. I have reduced my temps and photoperiod also, but my male doesn't seem interested in either of my females yet. Perhaps he's not old enough. He's growing tremendously fast right now. I have 2 females also. Post some pics of your three if you can.

[RedDr4gon333]

I didn't do anything and mine mated. I have one male and two females in the same encloser. I now have 9 eggs from one of my females. I think the other female was also pregnant, but I can't figure out where the heck she laid her eggs. She got fat, then skinny, but no eggs! Maybe she was just bloated... I don't know. But I didn't do anything and my dragons mated on their own. I had to go after my male and tell him to leave the women alone a couple of times because he was driving them crazy. I might be an odd case though... I have had my dragons for 2 years and bought them when they were juviniles, so I think they are 3 or 4 years old. This is the first time my female ever laid any eggs, fertile or not.