san diego zoo diet question

Hi,
this may be a dumb question, but can someone please tell me if the ground turkey and eggs are suppose to be raw? I don't have a problem with it, but i've seen video of people feeding there monitor cooked chicken and hard boiled eggs, so it got me thinking that maybe the turkey and eggs are suppose to be cook? thank you in advance

I’m not too sure about the eggs in the San Diego Zoo Diet (SDZ). As far as I’m aware it is 2 pounds of ground (uncooked) turkey, with 20 grams of bone meal and 2 crushed multivitamin tablets. A couple of things to consider at this point, and please note that this is my opinion and experience, are the following;

Make sure to use the leanest ground turkey available. High fat contents lead to all sorts of issues, if fed over a long period of time, but in the short term will definitely lead to some really messy bowel movements. Also make sure that you purchase a high quality bone meal, like the steamed bone meal found in health food shops. They usually have this in tablet form, but can get it in the normal powdered from also. I obviously prefer the powdered variety. Finally, I use one Centrum tablet as my multivitamin. This is for various reasons. I do not use this as a staple diet; in fact, I usually feed the SDZ about once a month, maybe more at times. In between I still use rodents, chicks and insects.

As far as eggs go, I would feed them sparingly. For the most part I almost never give my monitors egg. If you do, I would recommend hard boiled, as this is the best option.

hey, thanks for the respond Ruan, i appreciate it. that was very informative and it helped.
also, i am sorry to hear about your white throat monitor, i understand what you're going through as i went through something similar about 2 years ago with Rocky, my previous chow chow.

Yeah, It always sucks when you lose an animal that you really care for. But it's part of growing and improving. If I had the chance, I would do it all again tomorrow.

What type of monitor(s) did you say you had, I don't think it was listed in the post?

Anyway, This is a great place to get more info, just shout, and there will always be someone giving a hand. I'm pretty new to this forum, but I love it here. All the best, and keep us posted.

RMK

I just started keeping monitors. I have a very limited space and time, so i'm going with the semi aboreal dwarf species. I have 3 baby V.t.tristis, and my adult pair of V. similis is coming in tomorrow.

I've never had the pleasure of keeping any of the more arboreal species before. I did keep a black tree for a while, but it was just an "in transit" sort of thing. I was nursing it back to health after a tail amputation. Very able animals!

I have a sumatran water monitor V. Salvador macromaculatus, an Asian V. Salvador salvador two savannahs V. exanthematicus and had the White Throat V Albigularis albigularis. I'm thinking of getting a new one, but I have not yet decided which species. I like the larger varieties, (as you might tell), and I'm going back and forth between biulding an outdoor encloure complex for them.

Maybe you can make a suggestion? The logical fit for me would be a black throat, since the white's are harder to come by, and I'd rather spend less on the animal so I can spend more on set-ups and caging. But who know's. At the rate things are going, an animal is more likely to find me than the reverse. As of late, I have been getting a lot of "could you take my so and so..."

Lol, you're talking to a guy that JUST started keeping monitor, so I don't know much about caging myself. You can however look at pictures of other people cage and come up with something.

black throat should be easy to get. you can easily find a baby for $100, if not then let me know.

You picked two very tough species to start with as starter monitors especially when it comes to V. similis. Even experienced keeper aren't having the easiest time with them.

Stick with whole prey items only. These two species need to eat small meals daily especially the similis. NO EGGS! Eggs, unless fertilized do not contain very many nutrients for monitors even when given the whole egg and has a a tendency to also give them very very smelly feces that is diarrhea. This is the same thing with the San Diego zoo diet. The title itself is VERY misleading with the word "diet" in there as it tends to lead a new keeper to believe it's part of a staple when in fact it's not. Last I knew it was used fairly rarely or when and animal was not doing the best or losing weight. The reason is it delivers high amounts of fats to the body quickly. This processes extremely fast and also comes out as very very smelly soft or runny stools.

A monitor's digestive system is extremely advance to the point it breaks down everything from hair, thickest bones and teeth of a prey item and draws the nutrients it needs from each portion of the prey leaving the by products and unneeded things to be discarded. The SDZ mix does not supply all of those nutrients. With the two species you have, who are kept differently, they will do well on a mix diet of bugs, mice and even chicks and whole fishes like smelt chopped up. My similis loves this mix and does extremely well on it but his favorite appears to be the fuzzy mice which are immediately gobbled up as the other prey items sit for a while before he saunters over to eat them.

Did you research these species before making the purchase? I certainly hope so.

RMKrugel - There are some gorgeous true white throats available right now on KS. Very rarely kept and even more so very rarely bred.

I was hoping that TailsWithScales would respond to this thread. Your experience and knowledge is always incredible! I have been drooling over those white throats on KS. They have been testing my self discipline.

I have to agree with everything you said. I mentioned I use the SDZ maybe once a month, some of my kids seem to like it, but many just ignore the "weird" stuff in the bowl and wait for chicks, rats and roaches.

Whish I had thought of the clicker! That's a great idea. I know of a gator park in Florida that shows that Cuban Crocodiles even respond to their names! One of my Savannahs will actually come out and sit with me when given the opportunity, or just climb all over me. I wish that I could say it's because I reared it so well, but it has just always been mellow. I got him as a three year old. The female is still a typical monitor.

My Sumatran would come to me too if I let it...to EAT me

Speaking of which, my chick supplier just quit the business, can you recommend a good supplier that won't kill me on the shipping?

Thanks for the info on the SDZ diet. I probably will not be using it then. I just got the V. similis and they are pretty shy. The V. tristis are doing great. One of the three that i got is still doesn't like me. one will tolerate me. the third one is friendlier. it would run over when i have food.

on the side note, i did do some research on both species. They are not too common in the hobby yet, so there aren't that much info on them. I get most of my info from the breeder.

The V. tristis is a bit picky about food, but i don't think that training them to take other food is going to be hard.