Play With a Baby Bearded Dragon - Choose a play time for your bearded dragon and stick to the same time each day. Bearded dragons are sensitive to routine and soon learn to anticipate your play sessions if you handle them regularly.
Place your hand inside the vivarium, palm up, and wait for your baby dragon to walk onto your hand. It will probably lick you at first to pick up your scent so that it can recognize you the next time you put your hand inside its home.
Play With a Baby Bearded Dragon
Keep the sessions short at first. When you begin to handle your bearded dragon, stay passive, allow it to come to you and limit each session to about five minutes so that it does not associate human interaction with stress or anxiety.
Handle your baby dragon with care because it is very fragile. Hold it gently and carefully cup your hand around the sides of its body to safely pick it up. Once your pet starts to initiate contact and recognize you when you open the vivarium door, you can progress to picking up your beardie and handling it outside the vivarium.
Allow your baby bearded dragon to chase a food item outside the vivarium. Some beardies love to hunt insects with the added freedom of running across a room to catch their prey. Appropriately sized locusts are a good choice and a tasty snack for the young lizards to chase because they are easy to catch. Release one insect at a time or you may frighten your pet.
Adult bearded dragons enjoy human interaction if they are handled from a young age. If you want to encourage your baby beardie to be friendly when it grows up, introduce play time into its daily routine. You can safely start a play routine when your lizard is around four months old. It is not advisable to play with bearded dragons younger than this, and hatchlings under four weeks old should not be handled at all. - by eHow
Label: