Keeping close watch of a pet bearded dragon’s poop doesn’t sound like a fascinating experience. However, expert beardie owners, caregivers, and vets agree that keeping an eye on your beardie pet’s poop color, texture, and frequency of discharge is one of the best ways to understand the behavior, health, and mood of your reptile pet.
I can almost hear you asking: Is bearded dragon poop white normal? White beardie poop isn’t normal. Typically, normal and healthy bearded dragons discharge brown poop with white or light-yellow urate paste at the end or sides. The brown poop should be log-shaped, solid, and soft while the urate is normally white or light-yellow, soft, and consistent.
White or chalky bearded dragon poop means your beardie pet is dehydrated. On top of this, a dehydrated bearded dragon may produce stringy saliva. On the other hand, chalky white and hard beardie poop points at excess calcium in the lizard’s diet. Then again, all-white poop means your beardie pet is only excreting urate because they haven’t eaten much recently or due to excessive hydration.
Nevertheless, bearded dragons sometimes produce black, green, red, yellow, runny, or watery poop for a variety of reasons.
Monitoring the poop from your barded dragon pet constitutes a vital part of the pet lizard’s husbandry. Moreover, understanding the condition of the waste discharge is a great way to determine the current health of your pet so you can offer the best care.
Read on to understand the different color variations in bearded dragons’ poop, their meaning, and remedies.
What Does Normal bearded dragon Poop Look Like?
Normal and healthy bearded dragon stool is usually brown, consistent, and log-shaped with a white or yellow urate paste at the sides or ends. In addition, the poop and urate pass simultaneously, so they should appear at the same time.
Nevertheless, some minor variations in a bearded dragon’s poop color are fairly common and shouldn’t be cause for alarm.
Still, it’s important to monitor the color, consistency, amount, odor, and frequency of the poop.
On top of this, watching out for other accompanying symptoms such as sleepiness, lethargy, and a dwindling appetite can enable you to identify underlying issues early before they cause serious complications.
How Often Do Bearded Dragons Poop?
Typically, bearded dragons should poop at least once per week. However, some bearded dragons may even poop every single day. Essentially, how often the cute friend defecates will depend on various factors.
Abnormal Bearded Dragon Poop Colors, Meanings, and Remedies
Definite and consistent changes in a beardie’s poop color from the normal brown-white often mean that something isn’t right with the health, habitat, or mood of your pet reptile.
Let’s dive right into the various bearded dragon poop colors, their possible causes, and remedies.
· Soft All-White Poop
If your bearded dragon pet produces soft all-white stool, it’s most likely just passing urate. In such cases, there’s nothing to worry about as this means your pet is either overhydrated or has recently taken little food.
Moreover, sometimes bearded dragon poops less frequently and produces soft all-white stool due to a faltering appetite.
This often happens when you adopt a new bearded dragon or relocate a beardie to another tank.
Possibly the best way to restore the normal beardie stool is by feeding them sufficient amounts of balanced food and water.
Additionally, giving a beardie enough time to adapt to their new habitat naturally returns their stool to its normal color and consistency.
You can achieve this by offering suitable tank conditions and limiting pet-handling until your dragon is comfortable with their surroundings.
· Dry All-White Poop
Chalky white bearded dragon stool and stringy saliva usually point at mild dehydration while dry all-white poop means that your pet is extremely dehydrated. This can result from diarrhea, abnormally low humidity, or extraordinarily high tank temperatures.
Fortunately, it’s easy to fix mild dehydration in a pet beardie. Here’s how to go about it:
- Give your dehydrated bearded dragon 15-30-minute baths in clean and shallow luke-warm water up to their neck thrice each week. This moistens and rehydrates the lizard’s skin
- Provide sufficient and clean drinking water in a large and shallow dish positioned at the cool sector of the tank at all times
- Maintain suitable tank temperatures and humidity levels
- Supply green vegetables, leafy greens, and fruits with high water content in the bearded dragon’s diet to keep them properly hydrated
Dehydration can cause grave health complications in a bearded dragon if it’s not resolved promptly.
Thus, a beardie pet with consistent chalky white poop should be taken to a reptile pet vet for professional examination, diagnosis, and prognosis.
· Chalky Hard Urate
Typically, a bearded dragon’s urate excrement should be a soft white or light-yellow paste. Chalky hard urate indicates that the beardie has had an excess supply of calcium in their diet.
Thus, you can restore the normal brown-white poop-urate mixture easily by cutting back on calcium supplementation and offering foods with less calcium content.
However, ensure the calcium in the diet is sufficient to support your pet lizard’s healthy growth for their specific age.
· Black Bearded Dragon Poop
A common misconception among inexperienced bearded dragon pet owners is mistaking their pet’s dark brown poop for black poop and interpreting it as a health problem.
However, normal brown beardie poop naturally starts darkening after some hours, thus shouldn’t be cause for alarm.
However, black bearded dragon poop is a different story. It can occur for any of these reasons:
- When you feed your lizard pet too many insects and insufficient vegetables or plant matter
- Impaction- Blocked bowel movements sometimes lead to black stool, tears, severe constipation, and internal bleeding
- Black and watery (runny) poop often indicates a presence of parasitic infestation or infection in your baby bearded dragon pet
There are different ways to resolve the black poop issue depending on the specific cause.
For instance, including chopped leafy greens, vegetables, plants, and fruits in an adult bearded dragons diet at least three times each week is a great way to restore completely normal and healthy bearded dragon poop color from black.
Further, cutting back a little on the amount of live insect feeders you supply can also help to correct a bearded dragon’s poop color from black.
However, if you pet still produces black stool despite enjoying the recommended balanced diet, consider taking them to the vet for examination.
You might discover that they’re either impacted or infested by parasites but your vet will advise on the best way forward.
· Yellow Beardie Poop
In most cases, yellow bearded dragon poop is the consequence of excessive calcium intake. It often happens when you feed your beardie too much high-calcium foods or provide an excess of calcium supplementation via gutting or dusting.
Although calcium is vital for the healthy growth and development of a bearded dragon, too much of it might be injurious to their health.
Particularly, too much calcium intake has been shown to cause organ damage, bowel complications, and liver disease in bearded dragons.
The swiftest and easiest way to rectify the yellow poop issue in your beardie pet is by reducing the pet’s calcium intake. Here’s a quick and effective strategy to follow:
1. Ensure the UVB light doesn’t cover the entire bearded dragon’s tank so the pet can move in and out of the light as they require. UVB light promotes the synthesis of vitamin D which in turn enables the absorption of calcium from a beardie’s diet. Thus, unregulated UVB exposure causes excessive calcium absorption which results in yellow bearded dragon poop
2. Reduce the amount of calcium you offer your pet. Since bearded dragons derive calcium from certain foods such as kale, cutting back on the high-calcium foods could be the trick to get the pet’s poop back to normal coloration. Moreover, reducing the amount and frequency of calcium supplementation you provide is a great way to cut back on a bearded dragon’s dietary calcium content and resolve the yellow poop complication.
Then again, the yellow poop from a bearded dragon could be a seminal plug from a male beardie or an infertile egg (slug) from a female bearded dragon.
In both cases, giving your lizard pet a gentle massage after a bath often resolves the situation and restores poop color back to normal.
Furthermore, bearded dragons occasionally discharge off-color yellow-like poop or urate due to mild dehydration.
Luckily, this is easy to correct by hydrating your pet and then ensuring their tank has suitable temperature and humidity to help the pet thrive in health and comfort.
· Green Bearded Dragon Poop
Occasional bearded dragon green poop from a bearded dragon is normal and typically comes from the green dyes in various green vegetables and leafy greens in the lizard’s diet.
The green color might vary from bright to dark green, but it’s often nothing to worry about as long as the urate is white or light-yellow and the pet is acting normally.
Nevertheless, in rare cases, green pop might indicate an underlying health complication in a bearded dragon.
For instance, if the green poop is runny, bloody, or extremely foul-smelling, your beardie could be suffering from anorexia, hemolytic anemia, or liver complications.
In most scenarios, green poop from your pet bearded dragon shouldn’t elicit worry if the dragon is active, alert, behaving normally.
However, if the green stool is accompanied by other worrisome symptoms such as lethargy or substantial weight loss, it’s best to consult a pet vet for examination.
· Red or Bloody Beardie Poop
Red poop from a bearded dragon can be extremely alarming especially to a new beardie pet owner. Nevertheless, the red color isn’t always blood but is sometimes occasioned by the food the lizard has eaten recently.
If they’ve recently consumed raspberries, beets, or other red fruits or vegetables, their stool is likely to be red occasionally.
In such cases, there’s nothing to worry about as the red poop will cease after a few hours.
Still, you shouldn’t dismiss easily or ignore the occurrence of red bearded dragon poop. Instead, keep monitoring the stool and watch out for other symptoms for a few days to best diagnose the situation.
Red stool from a bearded dragon can also be caused by blood traces in the poop due to internal bleeding in the pet’s stomach or intestines.
Internal bleeding may come from different sources including constipation, impaction, and parasitic infections.
Additionally, sharp foreign objects such as sticks, substrate, and large feeder bugs with sharp legs can pierce the beardie’s stomach or intestinal walls and cause internal bleeding. Consequently, the lizard discharges bloody poop.
Possibly the best way to find out whether your beardie is suffering from constipation or impaction is by looking and feeling for bumps on their underbelly.
On top of this, look for accompanying symptoms including lethargy, back-limb paralysis, loss of appetite, general paleness, inactivity, and rapid weight loss.
Fortunately, resolving impaction and constipation is relatively straightforward and cheap. All you need is to give your reptile pet a warm bath and gentle massage, especially on their belly to ease off any objects that might be stuck.
However, it’s recommended that you take the pet to a vet if the situation persists beyond a few days.
In the case of mild blood in a beardie’s poop, the best thing to do is to monitor the stool and the pet for a few days.
Moreover, you can collect a fecal sample for your vet to study. If the red in the poop doesn’t subside after about 48 hours, take your lizard pet to a vet for examination.
On the other hand, severe bloody poop in a beardie indicates a fatal condition.
For instance, noticeable bleeding from the vent is often a sign of grave health conditions such as prolapse or egg-binding. In such cases, it’s advisable to rush the pet to a vet for immediate examination.
· Runny or Loose Bearded Dragon Stool
Loose or runny beardie poop simply means that your pet lizard has diarrhea. Unfortunately, diarrhea can severely dehydrate your pet to the point of death, so it’s best to address and resolve it ASAP.
The most common causes of runny poop in bearded dragons are environmental changes, unsuitable diet, sudden diet changes, and parasitic infestations and infections.
If you’ve recently relocated your bearded dragon pet to a new terrarium or place, the sudden environmental change can cause the lizard to discharge runny poop. Similarly, impromptu dietary changes can lead to loose poop in a beardie.
Luckily, loose beardie poop caused by sudden environmental or dietary changes is easy to fix. Just give your pet some time to adjust to the new habitat or diet and the poop will settle in a few hours or days.
Inappropriate diet is also a major cause of bearded dragon diarrhea.
Feeding your lizard pet foods with plenty of foods rich in fiber such as pumpkin and apples and foods with high water content such as leafy greens, fresh fruits, and hornworms is likely to cause over-hydration and occasion diarrhea in beardies.
Fortunately, slowly cutting back on high-fiber and high-water foods is a solid way to correct loose stool caused by such foods.
Moreover, adding foods such as squashes live insect feeders, and collard greens in the lizard’s diet can restore the runny stool back to the normal solid log-shape faster.
Then again, runny bearded dragon poop due to parasites like Coccidia is considerably more fatal and harder to resolve.
It’s often caused by live insect feeders that pass on parasites to the beardie after consumption.
Unlike the loose stool caused by habitat and dietary issues, runny unhealthy bearded dragon poop occasioned by parasites is messier, more unformed, and exceptionally reeky. Moreover, it might be bloody or black in some cases.
On top of this, bearded dragon parasite poop might be accompanied by other symptoms such as:
- Anorexia
- Appetite loss
- Mucus in poop
- Lethargy
- Weight loss
- Foul odor
Whenever you suspect that a parasitic attack is responsible for your bearded dragon pooping runny stool, your best bet at a speedy solution is a quick trip to the vet.
FAQ
Do Bearded Dragons Pee?
Unlike mammals, beardies don’t urinate. Instead, they excrete nitrogenous waste from the kidneys as uric acid in the form of a chalky white urate paste alongside poop.
Besides getting rid of harmful nitrogenous waste substances, excreting urate enables bearded dragons to conserve plenty of water.
Check this detailed post about bearded dragon pee (here)
Wrapping Up
Looking at and monitoring a bearded dragon’s poop is hardly anyone’s definition of fun. Nonetheless, it’s a vital part of reptile pet husbandry that lets you understand their response to various elements and guides you to give your pet the best care.
Understanding a beardie’s bowel movements is a surefire way to tell their current health and mood states.
Black poop might indicate excessive insects in their diet, all-white dry poop is indicative of dehydration, while yellow beardie stool points at too much calcium content in the diet.
Furthermore, bloody bearded dragon poop more often than not signals at a severe underlying condition that’s causing internal bleeding in the pet’s gut.
Parasitic attacks, egg-binding, impaction, and feeding considerably large and sharp foods are common causes of internal bleeding and the consequent bloody poop in bearded dragons.
Then again, red or green bearded dragon poop might come from the respective red or green dyes after a recent meal of colored foods, particularly fresh fruits and leafy greens.
Typical normal and healthy adult bearded dragon poop should resemble a firm brown log with white or light-yellow urate paste on the sides or ends.
Naturally, a beardie’s stool should be consistent unless the pet is ill, stressed out, agitated, or their habitat setup is inappropriate.
Probably the best thing to bear in mind is that each bearded dragon’s poop color, texture, and frequency is different depending on their age, diet, and environment.
Thus, acquainting yourself with your pet’s typical poop appearance and schedule is the best way to spot potentially hurtful poop inconsistencies.
Consequently, you’ll have sufficient time to act to resolve injurious and potentially fatal conditions like impaction and parasitic infestations before they get out of hand.
Additionally, seeking swift vet intervention whenever you’re worried about your beardie pet’s poop color is a great way to resolve the situation.
In most cases, the vet performs a fecal examination to diagnose the problem and then offers a suitable solution.
