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Tracie,
I've stood by and supported most of your cause in the in the beginning simple because I didn't know any better. But when was the last time you actually sat down and talk to a medium or large breeder in person for several hours about issues like Adeno? Have you ever visited these so called "Puppy mills"? And where is your proof that we are inbreeding to receive our so called "high end colors"? You know the US bearded dragon history just as good as anyone else, some US breeders have been working on bloodlines and colors for almost 30 years now, most of them have since left the industry to pursue other careers, but we still have 20-30 years of outcrossed bloodlines to come up with the colors we have now. Now what good would it be to have a colorful morph that is sickly and never makes it to adult hood? Breeder for the past two decades have been working very hard to cross different like like GG into the colorful line to strengthen the gene pool. Some of your statements are so clueless it's not even funny, do you know the top breeders are constantly receiving dragons from Canada, all of Europe, and parts of Asia? A large portion of the UK lines were completely different from the original US lines from back in the 60's... And you want to talk about sickly, have you seen some of the Australian captive bearded dragons recently, some of their lines are in horrible condition! Have you tried to contact some Australian pathologist as AdenoVirus is alive and well in Australia, but not just there, it's on every continent that dragons are present! And I don't hear of mass die offs in the UK, or South Africa, or Canada, etc...
And to address you comments in another article, you do know that some breeders are so proficient that their hatch rates are now at 98%-99%, and some smaller breeders have had 100% hatch rate for several years now! Now I believe you were stating how horrible the US hatch rate was compared to the "Wild Born" Australian babies, the last time I checked the wild clutches were lucky to reach 50% and that's before predators eat the eggs!
Tracie we do appreciate what your doing in a way, but you are doing it all wrong, you are taking an activists approach to something that is not an epidemic! It can cause a problem from time to time, but so can the flu in young and elderly individuals. But you need to change your approach to get the answers your after, you can't just scare new comers to this industry away with false information and information you have no dealings with first hand! I'm willing to bet that more half of the cases of deaths here in the US every year are attributed to poor feeders and poor husbandry conditions hands down! Regardless if the animal had Adeno or not, they simply can't thrive in a sub par environment! So Tracie if you change your tone a little bit to asking rather than forcing these issues down others throats then you will get much farther than you have! You will continue to meet resistance to something that is not causing a large problem as breeders that have been dealing with dragons every day for a living will tell you there is no problem. Just like Jeff stated above, every species harbors Adeno virus and it does not cause problems unless their environment and diet are sub par! Thus again if our husbandry and diet are not up to par we will have sick animals regardless of the aliment! Very similar to cancer cells, all mammals harbor these cells and they are destroyed on a daily basis by our white blood cells, no one knows why one day our body no longer recognizes them as a threat! So very similarly it will be a very long time before we have any scientific understanding of AdenoVirus in Bearded Dragons.
So I agree with many other breeders, we have much bigger issues with feeders and husbandry as if either one was to faulter we would loose our colonies completely! And half of these "Adeno deaths" have the same symptoms as a bacterial infection, and you know how quickly a nasty bacterial infection can shut down the dragons system. You and I both have lost a dragon to a bacterial infection and I'm willing to bet your dragon Drache too had an enlarged liver and kidneys!
I don't see a problem with you finding answers to how Adenovirus effects bearded dragons, but don't scare people with stories when you are not 100% sure that those dragons even died of Adeno... And if you added up all of the so called Adeno deaths in the US it would be a very small percentage to the entire bearded dragon population, which might just come down to good vs. bad genetics! Very similar is why only 1/3 of the European cities died of the black plague in the 14th century and the remaining 2/3's were left unharmed! I guess my main point is you can't jump to conclusions as we don't have any scientific backing or proof pointing us in any direction, so collecting data is one thing but informing others that this is a deadly virus that once it infects your dragon it will be dead is a whole other thing...
Anthony
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