Thank you for posting this. I do hope someone who is thinking about getting one of those cool laid back really huge lizards they see at shows stops and thinks about what goes into raising one. Maybe I can help make your point for you.
In July a friend of my wife's asked if we would take their snakes off their hands, they could not afford to feed a Cal king and a baby Honduran milk snake. Before we made the trip he also mentioned a Savannah monitor, and would I be interested? I told my wife all about them, she said as long as I can handle it, why not?
When we met Magnus (our Savannah), he was in small Exo Terra, the size of a 10 gallon tank standing on it's side. No substrate, no hide (no room
) and a climbing branch. I see a monitor crammed in, his SVL was about 8 inches, he is supposed to be 2 years old. I can see every bone in his pelvis, and most of the vertebrae in his back and tail. He barely notices when I pick him up, and of course he is ice cold.
We are told of course that this little guy loves to cuddle, and will spend an hour or more just laying on your lap. Well DUH...that is where his heat is.
We are also told he mostly eats pinkys, about one every 10 days or so, and some crickets in between every now and then. I am doubtful he will make the 1 1/2 hour drive to my home. Since the adult king was in a 10 gallon as well, these "free" animals were about to cost us about $300 at the local Petsmart. We dropped them at home and went straight there to purchase a 20L for the snake and a 40L for the monitor, UTH and lamps and bugs. After a day of basking under a more ideal 110F he started to look around. Against all odds he has made a complete recovery since July, and has almost doubled in size and girth after 4 sheds.
Oh, and now that he is warm all the time, with plenty of food...he bites
I have a little tear in my pinky finger from just last night, he rips skin and draws blood every time he gets a hold of me...my little baby is growing up
.
He is really not that bad, but he does act like a monitor should, which is to say he is rather mischievious.
Here are the all important numbers to consider, and please be aware Magnus is not quite 1/2 grown at this point...at Petsmart prices:
$10 worth of crickets, large.
$5 in superworms
$3 in earthworms
Lets just round it up to $20 a week, and that doesn't count electricity and feeding the feeders, etc. Every week.
And since he is growing this bill will only increase. I can't wait to get a new house with more room so I can order crickets by the 1000.
I just bought him some roaches, I hope enough to last until the next show, since he won't eat as many as he does crickets. With the new house comes enough room to start a breeding colony, but right now he will eat them faster than they can reproduce.
He gets a hard boiled egg as well. Maybe I'll see about snails too.
I know of some safe fields, so in the summer I catch wild bugs. It is a risk but a slight one, and he really digs the variety. I do this for chameleons as well and the places I collect are pesticide free.
One thing he doesn't eat anymore is mice. He had gout, swollen joints, when I first got him. Savannahs eat insects almost exclusively in the wild, and can not metabolize animal fat very well. Here and there for a treat sure, but not as a staple. He has not had one since I have had him.
He costs more than any 4 king snakes I have, hands down, and he is just a baby. He costs more than my greyhound, for Pete's sake.
I don't want to scare people away from getting one, but you really need to do your homework and be fully aware of what you are getting into.
He is expensive. He is painful. But he is also really cool.
I can hold him once he calms down. Just tonight we spent a good 15 minutes together. Now that he is healthy and no longer spazes out when I open the cage I am starting to work with him being held. Progress is being made, and that makes both our lives better.
I do not regret taking him in, and every time he bites me it is his way of saying thanks. See when I first got him he didn't have the energy
unfortunately the condition I found him in is pretty much the standard, numbers wise. It really is a shame, they are fantastic creatures.
But not for the uniniated.
Thanks for the thread, it is Magnus approved