Bearded dragons make some of the most charismatic reptile pets with their unique appearances, fascinating traits, and personalities.

Unfortunately, beardies don’t express discomfort or pain vividly like other household pets such as cats or dogs. Thus, keeping a keen eye on your beardie pet for signs and symptoms of potential distress or illness is crucial.

So, how do you tell if your bearded dragon is sick? Typically, a bearded dragon that’s sick or unhealthy exhibits a variety of signs and symptoms such as:

• Cloudy or watery eyes
• Diarrhea (Runny or Watery poop)
• Impaction
• Lethargy and lack of movement
• Loss or lack of appetite
• Sudden weight loss
• Trembling (Tremors) and jerky movements
• Respiratory Complications (Coughing, wheezing, or gasping for air)
• Swollen limbs or tail
• Sunken or swollen eyes
• Wrinkly Skin
• Discolored or rotting skin
• Gaping mouth
• Discharge from the eyes, nose, or mouth
• Failure to poop for too long
• Kinks (twists) in the back or tail
• Boney appearance
• Other unusual behaviors include irritability, excessive hiding, failure to bask, shaking, dizziness, head tilting, and loss of balance.

As you’ll find out, these symptoms don’t always point at an illness in your beardie but could be due to other conditions such as brumation or shedding. However, the appearance of consistent or multiple symptoms simultaneously might indicate that your pet lizard is unwell.

15 Common Warning Signs that your Pet Bearded Dragon Might be Sick

1. Cloudy, Filmy, or Watery Eyes

The eyes of a healthy bearded dragon are naturally clear, active, and lively. Moreover, they always track motion around the beardie provided there’s light.

On the other hand, a severely sick bearded dragon sometimes exhibits watery, cloudy, or filmy eyes.

Moreover, the eyes tend to be lazy or seemingly unconcerned with motion around the reptile. If you observe this, a speedy trip to the reptile vet is your best bet at rescuing your pet dragon.

Then again, beardies sometimes display cloudy or glassy eyes around shedding time. If this is the case, giving your pet occasional warm baths is a great way to ease the shedding.

Just don’t scrub, rub, or brush off the skin shed but let it shed naturally to avoid hurting the lizard’s skin.

2. Anomalous Poop- Diarrhea (Runny or Watery Poop), Bloody Poop, or Discolored Poop

Let’s face it- it’s hardly fun to look at or fumble with a beardie’s excrement. However, monitoring your pet beardie’s poop is one of the best ways to get exceptional insight into their health condition.

Typically, healthy and normal beardie excrement consists of soft brown poop that’s solid and log-shaped with consistent white or light-yellow urate along the sides and ends. Further, healthy beardies poop anywhere between once to thrice every 1-4 days.

Conversely, poop from an unhealthy beardie is often stringy, watery, chalky-white, hard, or bloody. Beyond this, a beardie that stays too long without going (pooping) is most likely unwell.

Consistent watery poop (diarrhea) and bloody poop often indicate that your bearded pet dragon is infested with parasites, while chalky, hard, and all-white beardie poop might indicate hypocalcemia (extremely high calcium levels in the blood).

Then again, stringy all-white hard poop means your bearded dragon is dehydrated. Naturally, it’s easy to resolve dehydration in beardies by offering drinking water, misting their bodies, offering occasional swimming and massage sessions, providing water directly to the mouth via drops, or feeding succulent foods like fresh fruits, veggies, and salads.

However, it’s advisable to seek immediate help from a vet once you confirm or suspect that abnormal beardie poop is indicative of an underlying health condition.

3. Lethargy and Lack of Movement

Naturally, a healthy bearded dragon stays active and lively throughout the day. These reptiles are fond of eating, playing, basking, climbing, exploring, digging, and burrowing. Thus, a healthy beardie pet stays engaged.

On the other hand, a beardie that’s consistently withdrawn, lethargic, or lazy could be ill. Most times, a sickly beardie tends to sleep excessively, hide a lot, doesn’t play, and plays dead during the day.

Beyond this, an unwell pet beardie tends to bask without moving. Numerous beardie afflictions, including parasitic and infectious diseases, are discovered in lethargic bearded dragons.

Nevertheless, lethargy, inactivity, and excessive sleeping in beardies sometimes indicate that your pet is preparing for shedding or brumation.

4. Loss of Appetite

You’ll agree with me that a bearded dragon that hasn’t eaten for a few hours or days should hungrily attack any food you provide immediately.

Thus, a beardie who has gone for a few days without food but doesn’t show a desire to eat must be unwell.

However, adult bearded dragons experience periods of low or absence of appetite around brumation and shedding times.

During these periods, the lizards can go for days without eating. Still, loss or lack of appetite might signify a severe underlying health condition such as impaction or parasitic infestation.

A quick trip to a reptile pet veterinarian is the best way to tell whether a sickness is responsible for your pet’s dwindling appetite.

Additionally, watching for a combination of other accompanying symptoms along with the loss of appetite can help you to determine better whether the lizard is ill or not.

5. Sudden weight loss

Bearded dragons hardly lose noticeable weight even during brumation unless they’re unwell. So, if you discover rapid weight loss in your beardie pet, they’re seriously ill. Sudden weight loss almost certainly points at a sick bearded dragon.

The worst thing about deadly bearded dragon illnesses like parasitic infections and metabolic bone disease (MBD) is that they weaken the reptile, eating into their energy and body fat reserves.

As a result, your beardie will likely lose considerable weight within only a few days.

Luckily, tracking your lizard pet’s weight each week is a reliable way to identify when they start losing weight.

Afterward, this information is essential in determining the nature of your beardie’s illness, the time they fell ill, and the rate of the illness’ progression.

In turn, you’ll be able to seek the best medical intervention for your bearded buddy.

6. Trembling (Tremors or Twitches) and Jerky Movements

Monitoring your pet bearded dragon’s gait is a reliable way to determine their health status. If your bearded dragon friend struggles to maintain balance, walk, run, climb surfaces, or dash under hides, something’s off with their health, making the pet extremely weak.

Typically, twitching, trembling, or other jerky movements in beardies indicate that your pet is suffering from an illness that’s making them too weak, uncomfortable, and painful to stand or walk with stability.

On top of this, the affliction might affect the lizard’s ability to eat or drink effectively.

Additionally, jerky and shaky movements might indicate a calcium deficiency in your pet beardie. The worst consequence of hypocalcemia (calcium deficiency) in beardies could lead to the fatal MBD if left unchecked.

Typically, MBD leads to thin, brittle, and porous bones that are too weak to support the beardie’s body normally.

Fortunately, supplying your beardie pet with the right proportions of calcium-rich foods and calcium supplementation via gutting or dusting insect feeders, along with providing appropriate UVB exposure, is a solid way to crank up calcium levels in your beardie back to normal.

Sadly, if your pet beardie already has the metabolic bone disease, they’ll require immediate vet intervention to alleviate the symptoms and reverse the condition

7. Respiratory Complications (Coughing, Wheezing, or Gasping for air)

Breathing difficulties in beardies always point to an underlying respiratory infection. Typically, these infections manifest in bouts of coughing, wheezing, or gasping for air.

As respiratory infections in beardies progress, they make it harder for the reptile to breathe effectively, resulting in wheezing or coughing whenever the pet opens its mouth.

Unsuitable tank conditions such as unhygienic (dirt-laden) enclosure, inappropriate tank temperatures, and imbalanced humidity levels are often responsible for respiratory complications and the resultant sicknesses in captive bearded dragons.

If you discover your lizard displaying signs of respiratory afflictions such as difficulty breathing, coughing, or wheezing, an urgent trip to the vet is the best approach to rescue the beardie.

The breathing complications imply that the dragon can’t breathe normally on their own.

Possibly the worst thing about respiratory infections in beardies is that they spiral quickly out of control if left untreated.

Ultimately, they lead to the untimely demise of bearded dragon pets. Be sure to see a reptile vet immediately if your bearded dragon starts wheezing, as this means it might be in trouble.

8. Swollen Limbs or Tail and Kinks (Twists) in the Back or Tail

If you discover swollen or twisted limbs, back, or tail in your bearded dragon pet, the best thing to do is immediately take the pet to a reptile vet. In most cases, these symptoms indicate an infection or broken bone.

While your beardie might have broken or twisted a bone due to a fall from a considerable height or improper (rough) handling, broken and twisted limbs, back, or tail is often signs of Metabolic Bone Disease in bearded dragons.

MBD stems from calcium or vitamin D3 deficiency and insufficient UVB light exposure and causes bones to be thin, frail, and brittle. Thus they twist or break easily.

Regrettably, MBD progressing to the bones, tail, or back-breaking stage is exceptionally challenging to resolve.

Nevertheless, an urgent trip to the reptile vet, sufficient calcium supplementation, UVB exposure, and an overall healthy diet can help ease the symptoms of MBD and reverse its consequences.

9. Sunken, Bulging, Puffy, or Swollen Eyes

Though bearded dragon eyes naturally bulge like other reptiles, healthy bearded dragon eyes are bright and clear.

On the other hand, a pet beardie that constantly keeps their eyes shut or has eyes that appear to be consistently sunken, swollen, puffy, or bulging excessively might be unwell.

However, these eye conditions sometimes depict a shedding beardie, so it’s recommended to watch for multiple eye symptoms to ascertain whether your pet has an eye infection or injury.

Still, it’s recommended to rush your beardie to the vet immediately to notice peculiar eye symptoms or behavior.

Remember, beardies can quickly go blind from several causes, a painful, uncomfortable situation that is highly detrimental to their everyday life.

10. Wrinkly Skin

Typically, normal bearded dragon skin is a little wrinkled as it doesn’t stretch to the level of the skin of other animals.

Beardies with fat pads and standard-sized tails characteristically have skin that’s a little wrinkled.

Nevertheless, beardies with indented fat pads and scrawny tails naturally don’t have wrinkly skin unless they’re underweight.

Then again, if they aren’t underweight but still have wrinkly skin, there’s a high chance the reptile is dehydrated.

11. Discolored or Rotting Skin

A healthy bearded dragon characteristically has a warm yellow-brown color tone on its skin and scales. Beyond this, beardies leverage skin discoloration to communicate messages such as fright, agitation, sickness, or extreme stress levels.

The appearance of bright yellow, red, or black spots on the skin is the warning sign of an underlying health condition. If the marks or discoloration hold for too long, you’ll need to take the pet to a vet for a medical examination.

Further, rotting beardie skin is hard to miss as it’s visible. If the skin appears to decay toward the tail, the beardie might be suffering from tail rot, a deadly infection that can cause tail loss or the premature death of your precious pet. However, a consistently black beardie mouth often indicates mouth rot.

On the other hand, rotting skin that results in skin inflammation swells, and wounds often point at the Yellow Fungus disease.

This hard-hitting fungal infection eats into both superficial and deep-seated body tissues. If this is the case with your beardie pet, promptly take them to the reptile vet for a medical examination and the proper antibiotic medication to treat the condition.

Then again, discolored or rotting skin in beardies sometimes occurs due to a rough skin shed or physical bruising of the skin or scales.

Additionally, beardies leverage skin coloration, particularly darkening their underbelly and beard to communicate that they’re highly agitated or stressed.

12. Discharge from the Eyes, Nose, or Mouth

Like humans and other animals, healthy bearded dragons don’t ooze fluids uncontrollably from their bodies.

Conversely, a beardie irrepressibly exuding discharge or other fluids from the eyes, nose, or mouth is most likely suffering from an underlying health condition.

13. Impaction or Failure to Poop for too long

A healthy adult bearded dragon should poop at least once every 1-7 days. Suppose they’re consistently stretching this time to unusual limits (longer than a week) and aren’t undergoing brumation.

In that case, your pet beardie is most likely unwell due to impaction, egg-binding, or another health condition.

Often, impaction in beardies is caused by:

• Feeding your beardie with extremely large or hard-shell foodstuffs. Their food shouldn’t be larger than the gap between the beardie’s primary eyes to prevent choking and impaction.
• Equipping the beardie tank with the wrong choice of a substrate such as sawdust or wood carvings
• Unsuitable tank temperatures, especially temperatures that are too low for effective food digestion to occur

Sadly, impaction can cause grave bodily harm, extreme psychological torture, and the untimely death of a beardie pet if not resolved speedily.

14. Boney or Skinny Appearance

The beardie is extremely skinny or bony if you can see ribs or bones beneath your pet dragon’s skin. Frequently, this occurs when a beardie is sick, dehydrated, or starved.

Suppose you gently pinch the dragon’s skin and discover it’s sluggish in returning to its initial state (it doesn’t spring back into position).

In that case, your beardie is dehydrated and needs plenty of water by refilling its water bowl, bathing, swimming them in shallow warm water, or feeding succulent vegetables, fruits, and salads to resolve the situation.

On the other hand, if the beardie is eating normally but still retains that bony state, they’re most likely infested with parasites.

Parasites fleece a bearded dragon of their nutrition, rendering them skinny, weak, and susceptible to multiple illnesses. If this is the case with your beardie, you’ll want to rush them to the vet for immediate intervention to drive out the pests.

15. Other unusual Signs, Symptoms, and Behavior

Along with monitoring your bearded dragon pet for the above signs and symptoms, look out for these other symptoms and behaviors that might indicate a sick beardie pet:

• Grumpiness
• Excessive hiding
• Consistent failure to bask
• Constant head-tilting,
• Gaping the mouth for too long
• Loss of balance
• Bloating or overweightness
• The appearance of skin bumps, sores, or lesions

Once you observe these signs appearing together with any of the symptoms and behaviors discussed above, you should take your pet beardie to the vet for examination, correct diagnosis, and suitable prognosis (treatment).

Final Thoughts

Bearded dragons are naturally hardy reptiles that make resilient, long-living, and reasonably low-maintenance pets.

Nevertheless, like other pets such as cats, dogs, and parrots, bearded pet dragons are still vulnerable to numerous potential illnesses, including metabolic bone disease, parasitic infestations and infections, respiratory infections, and infectious stomatitis (mouth rot), among other afflictions.

Fortunately, most bearded dragon sicknesses are easy to treat once identified early. Thus, bearded dragon owners and caregivers are advised to keep a keen eye on their pet beardies for any symptoms of illness.
Once you spot a worrisome sign, symptom, or behavioral trait, consult your reptile pet vet to conduct a thorough medical examination, a professional diagnosis, and devise a reliable treatment plan.