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Old 12-04-2010, 06:17 PM   #1
TailsWithScales
Exclamation For low or inexperienced keepers buying .....

A new monitor pet. This post is being written in the hopes it will be seen by someone who may have limited experience or no experience. Actually it's really for anyone. I'll request it be stickied (hopefully) so it doesn't become buried.

There have been some really concerning ads in the monitor classified lately that have caused me to write this. The current one being a "tame" crocodile monitor (V. salvadorii).

So lets start with that word "tame" and why that's a dangerous word to use in ANY classified ad. The reason is monitors are just like a human being in that their personalities can and do change with ownership. Large species even more so because they usually do not like change. Just because an animal is calm or "tame" with the current owner DOES NOT mean it will be that way when you get it. I've purchased many many monitors who have claimed the animal to be "tame" and even "dog tame" and when I receive the animal it's anything but. And normally, with time and acclimation it doesn't change. My advice is this when looking to buy a "tame" varanid. Take that word with a grain of salt and toss it over your should. I'm not saying don't believe the person who's selling it but DO NOT expect that the animal you're getting will be that way with you. Potentially ever. Another thing that can be done is if the seller is so confident their animal is tame then ask for a guarantee on that. Meaning if the animal isn't tame after acclimation then ask for some of your money back or to send the animal back. I'm willing to bet the animal will not be so "tame" anymore. This is regardless of species.

Next is the true difference between captive born and captive bred. The way these words are viewed has changed as people try to sell off a monitor for more then what it's worth by claiming it to be something it's not.
Captive Born (CB) is an animal born in captivity. Where this is VERY misleading is a wild animal can still be captive born and sold as such for a higher dollar amount. The catch is it was captive born in a farm in whatever country the animal is located. So what used to be considered "farm hatched" has now been changed to "captive born" to make the animal more appealing and usually sell for a higher dollar amount. This is not captive bred animal and is close to wild caught as you can get.
Captive Bred (also CB) is an animal that came from captive parents. Where this is another tricky one is once again "captivity constitues animals even being kept in farms who could have bred to produce eggs and again are just very close to being a wild caught animal as they're basically brought in to the wild farms from the wild, some even already gravid or producing follicles, and allowed to lay then the resulting offspring are imported, house for a bit then sold as captive bred.
Captive Bred /Born (CBB) is a term that the animal came from fully captive parents and was incubated and hatched in a complete captive setting. 99% of the time a true breeder WILL have proof of most of the process is not all of it. This including breeding, ovulation, egg laying, and the resulting eggs /pipping. If the breeder doesn't have any of this especially egg laying /pipping photos I'd be very cautious and negotiate a lower price on the animal. Most monitor species ARE NOT being bred in the US and when they are it's heavily documented because it does happen rarely. Species that are truly CBB are the Australian species and the reason for this is the Australian trade lines have been closed for ............................. 15 to 20 years so no new blood is being brought in. Zoo's do have the ability to obtain new animals however the guidelines for such are extremely strict and a long - costly process is involved. So ask for proof of the animal being truly CBB. If not provided negotiate or just exercise a lot of caution.

Just a little side note on exporting just to give some figures. The most commonly exported varanids are Niles, Black throats, Savannahs and water monitors. The regulations are in place but not heavily enforced. My research has found (with help form others) that 150k Savannahs are allowed to be imported per season (based over 12 months), 100k BT, 100K niles and 150k water. So in one years time half of the 500k exported from their home countries are brought into the US. Take a wild guess as to how many of those animals actually survive to make it to market?? It costs and imported about $5 US or less to get one Savannah. That was a couple years ago that these base numbers were obtained but alas it's more then likely gone up as all things do.

Next is seller husbandry. This can vary greatly from the buyers and as such can create some problems with new charges when they're not being kept in optimal or close conditions. It's heavily advised you ask a lot of questions about the animal BEFORE sending the seller any money. Granted yes, they can and sometimes do lie but most buyers can tell when someone might be fibbing. I also strongly suggest checking the BOI. If the sellers husbandry is worse or equal to yours then when the animal is received do just a couple bars above what the animal is used to for the first week or two then bring everything up to par. The reason is a sickly monitors system can actually go into a form of shock if the changes are to drastic and this can lead to further illness and even death. If the sellers husbandry is better then yours it's strongly advised that you raise your standards and match it for the same reasons. Ask a lot of questions and maybe even tell the seller your husbandry. Most sellers appreciate this more then you know.

Also be completely mindful that as a monitor ages it sometimes changes drastically in personality. A once tame baby /Juvenal can become extremely aggressive as a sub adult and then change again once it reaches adulthood. Just like humans change, so do monitors. Once they start hitting sexual maturity that's when the main temperament changes happen and can be a 180o difference from what you knew. Expect your monitor to change. If it doesn't be pleased.

Monitors over 3 foot ARE expensive!! You may only pay $100 to buy the animal but the over all cost per year is high plain and simple. Do not just factor in the price of caging and the animal itself when thinking of buying. You need to factor in the animal, caging, lighting /heat, furniture /substrate, food, and electricity. Also your time. Monitors do require daily maintenance and some species even require daily feedings. If you cannot allot at least 30 min to an hour a day you may want to reconsider. First time buyers can easily become overwhelmed with the costs and daily care then remorse sets in and problems happen. So take a good look at the whole package before bringing a new monitor life into your home.

I think this all about covers it. If I do happen to think of anything else I'll add it later. I'm not really looking for this to be turned into full discussion. It's more for buyer information. When you've dealt with so many rescues as I and many others have it's hard not to want to put something like this out there in the hopes it may avoid someone making a large mistake and getting in way over their head.
 
Old 12-04-2010, 07:40 PM   #2
Drew Zaun

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
 
Old 12-05-2010, 12:34 AM   #3
TailsWithScales
One other thing I did forget to mention in the section about cost is another rule of thumb being the bigger the monitor the higher the costs and requirements. A 6 foot water monitor eats A LOT of food and requires and extremely large enclosure. So keep that in mine.

Also only part of this statement is true, explanation below:
Quote:
Savannahs eat insects almost exclusively in the wild, and can not metabolize animal fat very well.
As with any wild animal monitors are VERY opportunistic hunters. In the wild Savannahs (V. exanthematicus) have an extremely large prey based diet which is a lot of inverts. But their other main prey is also very large snails and shellfish. Yes they do eat mice in the wild but have been found to also eat birds, eggs, snakes, other lizards (including other monitors) and basically whatever they can catch. Bugs are easy but they won't hesitate to eat a mammal.
The part that isn't really true is a monitor not being able to metabolize fat well. It's been rumored that they cannot but studies and long term keeping has proven the exact opposite. If this is so true then thousands would be ill and die from diet alone every year especially back in the old days when husbandry was not what it is today. Where these rumors (as I call them) have come from is a monitor being kept in sub-par conditions that's fed way to much of something extremely high fat. I've know keepers who've kept monitors for longer then I have who've fed rodent only diets and never had an illness or death and their animals lived to old age, bred and produced young. Unhealthy monitors DO NOT do that. I have fed an all rodent diet until the last few years and have never had a death due to this, obesity or anything but healthy animals. I've had two female Savs even provide infertile eggs.
So really what it boils down to is how the animal is kept not the diet. Yes if you keep a monitor in a really undersized cage, without proper heat and feed it a bunch of mice daily or worse human food, yes it's not going to metabolize anything right, will become obese and die of organ failure. The all rodent diet being bad theory just doesn't hold up in testing and when the animal is being kept in proper conditions. Also zoo's would not adopt this method for their animals and neither would reptile sanctuaries etc etc.
Proper husbandry isn't about diet only!
 
Old 12-05-2010, 08:15 AM   #4
BigTattoo
If I may chime in, since this is the Iguana and Monitor forum.

Much of what has been said above also applies to Iguanas. Most Iguanas now are imported and farm raised in Central and South America. Don't be impressed just because it's a "name brand" CB. These are pretty much raised as wild caughts in cages and kept in smaller enclosures for a short time and exported by the 10's of thousands. Blues, reds, greens are just morphs that appeared from farm raising and are not specially housed or maintained any different.

Cheap to buy, yes, cheap to keep and raise to be happy, healthy and long lived. NO! All the above expenses for husbandry apply.

Captive bred and born CBB Iggys are few and far between. With how cheap the farm raised imports are not many are willing to go through the expense of breeding their iggys and try to compete with $12.00 petshop ones.

My wife does iggy rescue. We recently picked one up that is 4 years old and not much bigger than a neonate, total length 14". It was kept in a 55 gallon (glass was broken on one end and covered with a piece of cardboard) minimal heat, no UVB, fed cheap lettuce and it's amazing it lived for 4 years. When we picked it up the tank was full of "really cute" furniture. The ppl spent more on decorating the tank with this useless crap than on actually learning and taking proper care. He was a light lime green color and seemed really tame, go figure the poor little thing was cold as ice.

Got him home, set him up properly with good hot spot, UVB and a good range of temps and low and behold not so tame now. Tail whips and gaping are the norm but he is coming around with a little gentle handling and will stop squirming after a few minutes out of his cage. Still always looking at you sideways.

He's been on a good diet for 3 weeks now and is fattening up learning about different foods and actually liking them. Poor little guy had no idea what carrots, squash, parsnips peas and beans were. Still leary of iguana diet but is starting to eat a little. All it ever had was those lettuce mixes from the grocery store, red leaf, iceberg and the like. He loves collards and mustard greens now. Color is much better and we're hoping he will continue to do well but have no expectations that he will grow much more.

Sorry Christine don't mean to hijack your thread but I feel that Iguanas should not be left behind.
 
Old 12-05-2010, 12:23 PM   #5
Drew Zaun
Certainly iguanas are the poster child of a reptile that the pet industry has failed.
 
Old 12-05-2010, 06:56 PM   #6
TailsWithScales
Dave,
The intent of the thread yes was purely for monitor lizards not iguana's.

But we'll leave it. And yes Iguana are close to being the main "throw away" pet from people who bought the cute little baby without doing a stitch of research on the species. Thanks for the post.
 
Old 01-02-2011, 09:23 PM   #7
akonitony
This is an excellent thread. I just bought a croc monitor from UG reptiles today. It is the second one for me, but the first one was some 15 years ago, so I will be a little rusty, but I have plenty of time to spend brushing back up. The last one of these animals I had was a mean SOB. I used to have to fake him out as to which end of the cage I was going to open. I asked how tame this one was and they gave me the answer I was looking for when they said "I wouldn't trust it - it's a croc monitor". I probably would have looked elsewhere if they told me it was tame. I did ask if it was aggresive, and they said no. I asked if it had ever charged anyone and how do they go about cleaning it's cage and all, and again they said it was mellow with that sort of interaction, but when I get it shipped in, I will be using welder's gloves and have great respect for those jaws and claws anytime I interact with it.
At first, I was going to build it another inside cage of 8'L x 4'H x 3'W, but then I called back and asked if it is big enough to enclose with chainlink fence. They said yes, so I am going out tomorrow to scout for the perfect tree out back somewhere that I can enclose in chainlink and start building. I plan to have a cage within where I can keep it warm in the winter, not unlike a heated doghouse, but a little larger since I know the lizard will be staying in there for longer periods of time when it is cold than a dog would. If anyone has suggestions, I am all ears. I am in agreement there is no such thing as a tame monitor. I do hope I will eventually be able to handle it cautiously without having to wear gloves, but that will take me at least six months to be able to know the animal well enough for that, and even then I will probably still think it is unwise to take such chances. I've seen what they are capable of doing with that jaw, and it aint pretty. This one was originally from Bushmaster.
 
Old 09-12-2011, 08:10 PM   #8
Chris Wilkinson
Just my two cents

I agree this is an excellent thread. I’m sort of an abnormally here my herp experience is more in the line of caring and working with other peoples monitors and assisting in rescues. I have had the pleasure of caring for several Croc Monitors, Asian/Nile water Monitors and a few gators in my time. I currently own a 6 month old Black Throat Monitor. I have to say from personnel experience the Croc monitors I have work worked with were downright crafty. Buster was a mean one and he knew it. I could never take my eyes off him for a moment if you did you paid for it. He knew he instilled fear in his owner and would take advantage of that when he or I cleaned his cage. He never charged me like he did to his owner, I think that was due to when he first tried it I stood my ground. I would wear every leather glove he had and that SOB would go right above the glove if you would let him. I love the Asian water Monitors but the Niles were just pains in the ass. I had a few tail wipps the felt like someone stuck me with a hot iron. All the monitors I care for went through seasonal changes, mood swings during winter and it took time to figure them out and some I could never figure them out. Now with my black throat he has what seems to be a good temperament for now but I know this is not how he will act as he becomes less stress with time. I find it interesting that people think the normal stress reaction of a monitor to remain frozen in place and close their eyes as a sign of being tame when held. I just point out that he will run when he thinks you are not paying attention to him and they do. I’m never in a hurray anymore and I have no expectation of him being tame. He is what he is a hunter and that will not change. I try to keep a journal to document my feeding and his actions. I feed him Pinkies every odd day and insects (super meal worms, catapillers, snails, live/dried grasshoppers, cooked eggs) on the even days. I do not believe in feeding live as it heightens the feeding response and adds to the aggression levels. I look forward to being his friend and not much more than that.
 
Old 11-11-2011, 05:16 PM   #9
Digby Rigby
In regards to monitors not being able to metabolize fat we have found it to be due to inadequate basking temperatures. We use a minimum basking temp of 125 degrees. Any monitor can be "tame" when its only 70 degrees or less. Neither situation is acceptible.
 

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