One of the nice things about having a bearded dragon as a pet is that they are relatively low maintenance. Much more so than common household pets like dogs and cats. Once a day is usually all your beardie will need your attention.
But what if you need to leave them alone for longer than a day? How long can you leave a bearded dragon unattended?
Generally speaking, leaving a bearded dragon alone for one to two days is never a problem. Even three days is a viable time frame. Anything over 3 days with no human care is probably too long and you may be risking problems.
One note… You MUST have an appropriate sized enclosure like this one. An enclosure that’s too small is not healthy in many ways, including leaving them unattended. If you aren’t sure about enclosure size, see our full guide here.
Should you leave them vs. could you leave them
When talking to other bearded dragon owners on a variety of subjects, there is a distinction that always needs to be made. That’s the difference between “could” and “should”.
There are lots of things you could do to a bearded dragon. You could not provide proper temps in their vivarium. You could give them low-quality food. You could feed them insects you caught in your yard (please never do this!).
You could do all of these things and your beardie would probably not die (unless they ate lightning bugs, so, ya know, please don’t do that). But in reality, you should not do any of those things.
If you care about your bearded dragon, you will be much more concerned with what you should do and not very concerned at all with what you could do.
Too many people get caught up with what their beardie could handle in an extreme case and they leave out what the proper care of another living being looks like. There are very few areas this is more evident than when talking about how long you can leave your beardie home alone with no care.
There are people out there that regularly leave their bearded dragons home alone for two weeks with no care. Does their beardie die? No. Is their beardie healthy and happy? NO! Two weeks is far too long to leave them alone. You should never do this.
“My beardie didn’t die” is not a good way to judge whether or not they are receiving proper care. Letting a bearded dragon live in a week’s worth of feces with no food and no one there in case something bad happens is simply not a good idea.
With that in mind, let’s talk about what we should do. What responsible pet owners and loving bearded dragon parents do. What people who want to provide much more than a mere subsistence living standard would do.
While we’re not saying to never leave your beardie home alone, what we are saying is that there is a time limit. We’ve left our beardie, Bacardi, home alone for 1-3 days on several occasions. We’re always a little nervous being away from our baby, but she does just fine without us.
In other words, if you follow a few guidelines, it’s okay to leave them alone. Let’s take a look at how long and what you’ll need to consider.
Age matters
The first thing to consider is the age of your bearded dragon. The younger they are, the less time they can be left to their own devices. They are a lot like human children that way. Of course, they aren’t going to have a house party when you are gone, but there are other things to worry about.
If your beardie is just a baby, it’s not a good idea to leave them home alone, even overnight. This is a fragile time in their lives and they need daily care. In fact, baby beardies need care and interaction several times a day to ensure they grow up healthy.
If your bearded dragon is a juvenile, you have a bit more freedom. An overnight trip is usually not a problem here. We wouldn’t stretch it to 2 days, but 1 should be just fine.
The reason for this restriction on young bearded dragons has to do with their metabolism. At this stage, they are growing fast. Their little bodies are growing at an alarming rate and in order to do that, they need daily nourishment.
Young bearded dragons need food daily, and skipping even a day or two could be detrimental to their health. Could they go longer? Sure. But remember, this isn’t about what we could do. It’s about what we should do.
Once your beardie is mature and an adult, its metabolism has slowed. They no longer need food in the amount or frequency they did when they were younger. For this reason, a two to three-day trip will present no issues for them.
In fact, adult beardies regularly go without food for a couple of days in the wild when they simply can’t find food. They have enough stored body fat to make it through times like this with little to no issue.
That means that if your bearded dragon is a mature adult, head out for the weekend and have fun! Your little scaly buddy will be just fine and waiting for you when you get back!
How long can you leave them alone?
So let’s look at some real-world scenarios. While it’s easy for us to go on about woulds and coulds, a lot of people find themselves in situations with very few options. Not everyone has a place to board their bearded dragon. Not everyone has a neighbor who is willing to take care of a reptile.
When it comes down to brass tacks, what is a real-world guide to how long you can leave your beardie alone?
As noted above, one to two days is almost never going to be an issue. You shouldn’t think twice about this and as long as the precautions we list below are taken, you and your bearded dragon should be just fine.
Three to four days is stretching it. It’s not something you’ll want to do often, but it’s still considered okay for an adult. We asked our vet this question and he said that four days should be considered the max before we really look hard for some alternatives.
Once you get to the five to seven-day range, you start asking for issues. If you have an emergency and your dragon ends up alone for a week, they’ll probably live. They’ll even probably be okay with no long-term ill effects.
We would not recommend this amount of time alone if you can at all prevent it. With that said, emergencies are emergencies and sometimes poop happens.
Longer than a week is a problem. We know a couple that goes as long as two weeks, but these are the same people who lost a beardie not too long ago when it was only a few years old and couldn’t figure out why.
The stress and lack of food of a two-week hiatus are extraordinarily stressful for a bearded dragon. Even though that dragon may seem okay after the two weeks, there’s no telling what the stress of those two weeks did to them long term.
Again, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. If you need to leave for more than a few days, please exercise one of the options we include below!
What to do for trips of a few days or less
Clean their tank
No matter how long you are leaving them alone, you should always make sure their vivarium is nice and clean before you leave.
You don’t need to do a full tear down, but thorough housekeeping is definitely in order. Make sure there are no feces or remnants of feces in the tank. Make sure any old greens are cleaned out. Pick up any skin they might have shed.
Also, make sure their water bowl and food dish are clean. You’ll be leaving them some of both, so make sure you are using clean containers!
Check your tank location
You shouldn’t ever have your vivarium in direct sunlight. This is a great rule to follow whether you are home or not. A vivarium turns into an oven very fast when it’s hit with direct sunlight.
Some bearded dragon owners think it’s a good idea to put the tank near a window when they are gone. I’ve heard and read this more than once. Please don’t do this.
Make sure your tank is out of direct sunlight and not near a window. Keep it in its normal place. Your bearded dragon will appreciate your attention to their artificial lighting much more than trying to get them sunlight when you are gone.
Put your lighting on timers
We’re always baffled as to why some people don’t do this full-time. Having your lights on 12-hour timers is one of the basics when it comes to properly setting up your lighting. Beardies will thrive in a 12-hour on 12-hour off set up.
Setups that are random, meaning the lights get turned on when you get up and turned off when you go to bed, can cause a lot of stress for your bearded dragon. It also means that you need to be there in order for the lighting to work.
If you don’t already have it set up this way, put your lights on timers. Simple travel timers will do. Set them to 12 hours on and 12 hours off. Have both your basking lamp and UV light on the same cycle.
Instead of travel timers, We bought this power strip by ZooMed. It has 6 outlets. 3 always on and 3 on timers. It’s absolutely perfect for our set up. We have a ceramic heater and webcam plugged into the always-on side and the basking and UV lights on the timer side.
The ZooMed piece is a little more expensive than standard timers, but we think it’s well worth it simply to have everything in one place and in one unit. If you don’t already have something like this setup, head to Amazon, click buy now, and thank us later!
Set your home thermostat
In this age of smart everything, smart thermostats are found in a large number of homes. These little devices are great and pay for themselves in a short period of time.
One way they do this is by managing your heating and cooling based on whether you are home or not. It’s a feature called geofencing. While it’s great for saving you money on your heating bill, it’s not so great at knowing that when you are not home, your beardie is!
It’s important if you go away for a few days that your home doesn’t drop below 65 degrees. If it does, it could cause problems for your beardie. For a full guide to proper tank temperatures for bearded dragons, see our article here.
There are two solutions to this. One is to set your “away” temperature above 65. The other is to set up a ceramic heater that goes on when your basking light goes off.
Either option will keep your vivarium at the proper temps while you are away. Pick which one works best for you, and don’t forget!