What is Husbandry? Stop Making These Rookie Mistakes

What the Hell is Husbandry?

In reptile care, husbandry means how you house, feed, clean, and keep your animal alive and well. It’s the full package — habitat setup, temperatures, lighting, humidity, diet, and daily maintenance. Basically, it's everything you’re responsible for as the owner. If your beardie is sluggish, shedding poorly, or looking crusty, it’s probably a husbandry issue.

What Proper Husbandry Actually Looks Like

- Enclosure Size: Your 40-gallon starter tank isn’t cutting it. Adult beardies need a 4x2x2 minimum.
- Heating: Basking zone should hit 95–105°F, cool side around 75–85°F.
- UVB Lighting: No, the pet store coil isn’t enough. You need a real T5 linear UVB fixture.
- Humidity: Keep it around 30–40% for beardies. Not a jungle. Get a hygrometer.
- Diet: Balance of greens, live feeders (dubias > crickets), and supplements like calcium + multivitamins.
- Substrate: Tile, paper towels, vinyl mats. Not sand. Not bark. Not death-trap bedding.
- Enrichment: Hides (spots to actually hide, not an animal hide), climbing spots, basking rocks, shedding branches. Mental and physical stimulation matters.
- Cleanliness: Spot clean daily, deep clean weekly. Don’t let poop build up.

Why Husbandry Isn’t Optional

Bad husbandry = slow death. Sounds harsh, but it’s true. Metabolic bone disease, impacted guts, respiratory infections — they all start with a lazy or misinformed setup. Veterinary bills will cost you way more than a decent UVB light or a larger tank ever would.

Reptile ownership isn’t just a hobby — it’s a responsibility. Get the setup right, do the research, and your lizard won’t just survive — it’ll thrive. That’s what real husbandry is about.