monitor and its feeding habits

well....here i am again......my blackthroats cold is gone, but now i have another question.......i bought this beautiful lizard at the reptile show in indianapolis and the owner told me he would only eat canned cat food, and raw meat cut in cubes.....i always research my future pets first and everything i have read tells me cat food is bad????? he turns his nose up to mice, rats, canned monitor food, and even the ground turkey.....any other varanus enthusiasts have any good diet ideas that might work out and that are both tasty and healthy????? are the canned dog and cat foods really that bad for the health of my monitor???? i have had, and cared for, many monitors in the past and this is the first one to be so picky! is it possible he has already aquired a taste for the cat and dog food and wants nothig else? all that have faced this problem please lv feedback........thanks

Every single monitor expert that I've talked to said canned cat/dog food was bad. Can you try putting a little of it on ground turkey? Maybe smearing it on the outside of a F/T mouse? Try baby chicks or eggs?
Mine eats everything. Ground turkey, mice, rats, chicks, eggs, cooked eggs, she doesn't care. Might have to let him not eat a day or so even.
JMHO.
Wolfy

Describe the cage and the conditions inside it. Also it might be finicky due to insufficient temps. what are the temps in the cage. temps should be one for the basking spot, the warm end, and the cool end. The basking spot for black throat should be around 160 degrees farenheit warm end in the 80's cool end in the upper 60's lower 70's. Yes 160 degrees or so for the basking spot which like I said is a surface temp not an ambient temp. I have noticed that the cooler it gets the more finicky they become. A healthy blackthroat is like a garbage disposal and should eat just about anything. If you give it the opportunity to heat up to optimal levels its metabolism will increase and it will get hungrier therefore less finicky.

Digby Rigby Balboa28279@mypacks.net

his cage is 8ft long by 3ft wide by 5ft tall...the temps are real close to what you have stated...and he is in a room that is 15ftx13ft, which he is free to roam for about 5 hours a day. in this room i have several large pieces of driftwood, 2 of which also have a basking bulb above. for uvb/uva i have 160 watt powersun bulbs, and for basking i have 150watt halogen zoo med bulbs. his substrate is a mix of cypress mulch, playsand, and bed a beast. also he has many hidespots and gradients of air. since my post i have smeared a little cat food on f/t mice and had success.i'll try this with a few other food items and let you know thanks for the help