How Often Do Bearded Dragons Drink Water? Full Guide

Bearded dragons come from the deserts of Australia, and like every other desert creature, they have evolved so that they don’t need that much water that you might think they want.

When we talk about our bearded dragons, we need to keep them hydrated as much as possible because they won’t get water on their own in captivity.

Their water needs vary from size to age; adults need more water than young ones.

You might not know that your beardie gets water, even from the food you provide. Along with living food, fruits, and veggies, which contain a good amount of water, they sometimes won’t even need extra water as they already fulfill their thirst from the water inside the food they eat.

So, How often do bearded dragons drink water? Yes, bearded dragons drink water and need enough water intake to survive like every other living organism. Keep reading; at the end of this post, you’ll know all the facts about bearded dragons’ drinking habits.

How Often Do Bearded Dragons Drink Water?

It’s important to provide your beardie with fresh and hygienic water daily. The common way to offer water to your beardie is in a water bowl.

Beardies can get water from their food from insects and plant-based foods that they feed on; however, it’s necessary to provide them water to ensure that they are fully hydrated and have enough fluid in their body, which is needed to keep them healthy.

As an owner, you need to ensure that your beardie is getting a consistent diet that contains insects, calcium, plant-based foods, and water at the correct time interval. You must provide them with everything needed to keep them healthy.

What Happens If Bearded Dragons Don’t Get Enough Water?

If your beardie doesn’t get enough water, they can get very sick. Not getting enough water can lead to dehydration, and it’s serious. 

Dehydration alone can lead to so many other long-term medical issues. Some of the diseases caused due to dehydration are kidney diseases, constipation, gout, and abnormal shedding. Mild dehydration can treat at home, but if it seems serious, you should visit your vet immediately. 

6 Signs of a Dehydrated Bearded Dragon 

6 signs of dehydration that you can observe in your beardie and can try helping them are:

1: Excessive Wrinkled Skin

If you notice excessively wrinkled skin on your beardie, that’s a clear sign of dehydration. To rectify the situation, you need to hydrate.

If your beardie’s skin won’t improve even after hydrating, it’s time to visit the vet to get your pet treated.

2: Constipation

Constipation is when bowel movements are not frequent, dehydration can reduce the muscle movement of the colon and hence causes constipation.

Rehydration will help treat constipation with a little help from the vet.

3: Decreased Elasticity and Flexibility of Skin

Dehydration causes decreased elasticity and flexibility of the skin in beardies. You can easily test it at home by gently tugging at the skin and then letting it go. If it snaps back to its original place, it means your beardie is not dehydrated, but if the skin does not go right back, it means your beardie is dehydrated and needs to get hydrated. 

4: They Get Sunken Eyes

Dehydration is one of the most common causes of sunken eyes in your beardie, and most of the time, sunken eyes require a visit to the vet; some can treat at home.

Sunken eyes caused by dehydration are not that serious, and they can treat at home by just hydrating your beardie.

5: Trouble in Shedding

Shedding plays an important role during the bearded dragon’s growth period, and it’s a natural process. They need to shed at regular intervals; if your beardie is not shedding, that can be because of dehydration, and not shedding can affect them. So, it’s necessary to get them hydrated soon.

6: Lack of Appetite

Loss of appetite can cause by dehydration; it is somehow linked to constipation. As beardies feel discomfort when constipated, they have no urge to eat and tend to avoid food.

Not eating long can make them weak and sicker, so treating them at the right time is better.

5 Ways to Make Your Bearded Dragon Drink Water

These are the 5 ways to make your bearded dragon drink water and keep them hydrated:

1: Misting

As your beardie is not drinking water, you can try misting those surfaces that it can lick. Using this method teaches them to drink water, as they have fun sliding on the misted surface and sometimes lick the surface they are sliding through.

Before misting the surfaces, clean the surface that is to be misted as you don’t want your beardie to get any sicker due to the infection from licking the dirty surface.

2: Providing Water Bowl

You should provide fresh water to your beardie in a bowl, which should change daily. The bowl you are providing should be shallow as it will prevent drowning in the water inside the bowl.

You should clean the bowl regularly as your beardie likes to roam a lot, and instead of drinking water from the bowl, it will just like to stand inside the bowl with its dirty body, which makes the water non-drinkable. As beardies don’t know how to drink water from the bowl naturally, you need to train them.

3: Add Flavour to Their Water

When you train your beardie to drink water from the bowl, you should try to add flavors to the water you are providing them.

While doing so, you can try adding the juice of fresh fruits with a pleasing odor like strawberry or papaya. This way, they can learn to drink directly from the bowl.

4: Bathing Your Beardie

You should try bathing your beardie as it’s an amazing way to hydrate them. Your beardie doesn’t need to be going to enjoy the bathing process because some bearded dragons just don’t like bathing. They sometimes drink water while taking baths as well, so it’s worth giving a try.

You can try bathing them twice a week for about 15-20 minutes each time; it will help keep them hydrated.

5: Misting Their Food

Misting their food means you must spray water on the food you feed them. By this method, they won’t even realize that they are taking in water, which will keep them hydrated.

There are so many fruits and vegetables which have a good amount of water content, like kale, grapes, strawberries, watermelons, etc., so that they can get enough water from the food as well, and you won’t need to put so many efforts trying to make them drink water.

Conclusion

Even though bearded dragons come from Australia’s deserts, they need enough water to keep themselves hydrated. Though they don’t need it in large amounts, they still need enough. Dehydration is caused due to lack of water intake, so it’s better to keep them hydrated and avoid various health issues caused due to dehydration.

Just keep one thing in mind: you don’t have to force them to drink more water than they need, and if you don’t know how much water they need, you need to do proper research and even talk to a vet.

So, keep offering your beardie fresh water, feed them healthy food and give them baths on time, and that’s how you can keep them healthy and happy. So, How often do bearded dragons drink water? After reading this post, you must know the answers to all such questions by now, and even if you are a beginner pet owner or a keeper, it might have helped you learn something new.