Savannah Monitor - Page 4

emmels705 · 10-28-10, 08:20 PM

Thanks! Can the roaches handle the cold? Like, could I keep them outside or in a shed? Lol. also, should I feed him every day, or every other? I think that every three days isn't enough for him. He seems to like the warm bathes, he tends to fall asleep while he's in there... glove is gone! Thanks for the advice, again!!! I think I'm just about there as far as handling him and making him feel at home

infernalis · 10-29-10, 01:35 AM

I think I know why you want to keep the roaches out in the shed.

They cannot infest your home, This is a tropical roach that needs to be kept warm and cared for just like reptiles do.

so any escapes will die rather than infest your house, only 1% of the entire roach species in the world are pests.

Dubia roaches require some care to perpetuate. I have kept mine in the house for years and NEVER had a roach infestation.

Dubia are terrible at escaping, as long as you keep them in a smooth poly tub they cannot even climb the walls to get out like most other insects can. Do not use an aquarium, the baby roaches can get enough grip on the silicone to climb out, it's not so much a problem with infestation, it's more about losing good lizard food.

These roaches like really warm enviroments, and a small heat pad under the tote will promote rapid breeding, if you want to slow down the production, just lower the temps and they stop having babies.

The males have wings, useless wings, they cannot fly.

emmels705 · 10-29-10, 11:28 AM

Haha, Wayne, you hit the nail on the head lol!!!! I hear roaches and I'm like oh hell no! lol... I will absolutely look into it and discuss it with the others I live with cause they were hesitant as well when I mentioned it. Thanks!

infernalis · 10-29-10, 12:09 PM

I have a far bigger problem when a rat or mouse escapes!!

we had a rat running free in the house for months before I could catch him in a live trap. (and yes I sat bowls of food and water out on the floor, it kept him out of our pantry.)

Grimleo · 10-29-10, 12:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by infernalis

The males have wings, useless wings, they cannot fly.

They CAN fly. Even though it's in short little bursts of flight. It's just very unlikely that they will. And depending on how fat they are, they can hardly ever even lift themselves off the ground. The lighter ones get some air, though. It's better to be prepared lol

bighog85 · 10-29-10, 07:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Freebody

if he closes his eyes while your holding him that doesnt mean hes tense, it means he content. he would never close his eye on a potential threat to him

No it really does mean he is scared. It is them either playing dead or just making the threat go away in their minds. My beardies do it, my savs do it, and my salvator does it.

At this age he is growing rapidly but I don't believe in power feeding, which is what you are doing when you give him his fill every time you feed. Most people think that hugely rapid growth is a sign of good health. While obviously you do want him to grow, making him go to fast can be more detrimental than underfeeding. His bones and organs cannot keep up with the rest of his body and that can lead to organ failure or MBD if it is really bad. I regulate how much all of my animals eat because in the wild they do not have abundant food supplies available whenever they want it. They have to roam sometimes many miles each day just to get enough to stay alive and I will always be a firm believer that they were designed to live in the wild, not captivity and we should do our best to match that as closely as possible. So to sum what you should be doing; don't feed him till he stops, get some roaches going and make them your primary food source, do NOT give him rodents more than once a month and go very slowly with the handling. As I mentioned before, these guys are smart and one bad handling experience to set you back many months or even permanently.

Freebody · 10-29-10, 07:30 PM

hmm thats weird you said they close their eyes while scared, my nile monitor would only close his eyes, when he was in a good mood, when he was sore at me, or just in his regular fowl mood he would eye ball me like you would not believe. puff his neck out and hiss, but never close his eyes unless he was all relaxed and layed back and i was most likley pulling off his dead skin off to get him happy, which he loved.

bighog85 · 10-30-10, 10:40 AM

Relaxed and laid back is called playing dead. Monitors are not dogs, they do not need or desire human attention. How do you know he was happy and loved having you pull off skin? I have a nile as well and he will do exactly what you are describing and when he goes "calm" it is not him settling down to be handled. He is trying another technique to make you go away. As monitor keepers, we really need to get away from the mentality that these animals are meant to be normal family pets. They can become like infernalis' animal but that takes time and he will tell you that his animal still cannot be trusted at any point. This is all hard to explain without showing you what I mean but you just have to take my word for it that your animal is not loving you. If he shows interest in you it is because he associates you with food and that is mostly likely it. Monitors do not have good and bad moods and everything in between. They are hungry and they are not hungry. That is about it.

infernalis · 10-30-10, 02:33 PM

Folks, Brian (Bighog85) knows his stuff, We are lucky to have his knowledge here.

Freebody · 10-30-10, 06:16 PM

not to be rude, as im just opposed to what you said is all, conversation wise as i embrace your info as i do everyone and anyones, but i would be lying if i said my nile didnt love his skin being taken off for him, because if i did anything other than that or walking him around my back yard of actually giving him food, any other time he was a terror. as far as his mood only being hungry and not hungry, well i have fed him and gone to walk out of his cage and hes turned and attacked me many times, and i have also gone in after hes not eatten in a day or so and hes pretty calm, he will be asleep under his heat light open his eyes and puff up a little and then unpuff himself and fall back asleep when he notices im just cleaning his water and spot cleaning his cage. I would really need to work with thousands of monitor to get a better idea of what they really are like as this is my only experience with one, so im not saying your wrong by all means, im just saying in the sake of good conversation i dont think thats the case

ps i just got home from the reptile expo were i was going to get my new sav monitor, i got him looked good and i was showing him to this girl when she noticed the tips of all his fingers were gone

saddly i returned him for a full refund, but i was so looking forward to getting one, i got roaches breeding, a temporary 4'x4'x3' cage set up with soil 2 heat spots 1 at 120d the bottom one sitting at 95d ambient temp is 84d tunnel, hide box and the hotspot has the lower level which is alos a hide, and his large water tub.... perfect setup till hes a couple years old and now im sav,less

now i need to find one else where

bighog85 · 10-30-10, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Freebody

not to be rude, as im just opposed to what you said is all, conversation wise as i embrace your info as i do everyone and anyones, but i would be lying if i said my nile didnt love his skin being taken off for him, because if i did anything other than that or walking him around my back yard of actually giving him food, any other time he was a terror. as far as his mood only being hungry and not hungry, well i have fed him and gone to walk out of his cage and hes turned and attacked me many times, and i have also gone in after hes not eatten in a day or so and hes pretty calm, he will be asleep under his heat light open his eyes and puff up a little and then unpuff himself and fall back asleep when he notices im just cleaning his water and spot cleaning his cage. I would really need to work with thousands of monitor to get a better idea of what they really are like as this is my only experience with one, so im not saying your wrong by all means, im just saying in the sake of good conversation i dont think thats the case

ps i just got home from the reptile expo were i was going to get my new sav monitor, i got him looked good and i was showing him to this girl when she noticed the tips of all his fingers were gone

saddly i returned him for a full refund, but i was so looking forward to getting one, i got roaches breeding, a temporary 4'x4'x3' cage set up with soil 2 heat spots 1 at 120d the bottom one sitting at 95d ambient temp is 84d tunnel, hide box and the hotspot has the lower level which is alos a hide, and his large water tub.... perfect setup till hes a couple years old and now im sav,less

now i need to find one else where

What you need to realize though is that these animals can change in an instant. You are describing different scenarios and how your animal reacts in them but you are giving your animal attributes that it does not possess. You said yourself that an animal like that would not just close its eyes when a threat was present but you think that your nile will just go to sleep when you(a threat in his eyes) barge into his environment. He is not going to sleep. If he puffs up and then closes his eyes he is stressed. I promise you that he is not enjoying your skin picking sessions. Especially since he is young. Your animal is either stressed out or he is the only young nile monitor in the world who enjoys a predator picking at his body. I'm betting it is the former option. My nile acts the same way yours does so I can say from personal experience that I know exactly what you are describing.

Freebody · 10-30-10, 09:06 PM

ah you could be right, it does make sence that i could be attributing emotions in which it does not have, the nile was 4 1/2 feet give or take a few inches, so it was not that young. i figure he likes me cleaning him because when i would let him out to wonder around he would be go go go no matter what i did, but when he was in shed and i would slowly pull of the dead skin he would be so calm during and after, he would even walk up to me somtime when i would stop pulling them off and walk away. almost all the time while cleaning him he would put him arms and legs straight back behind him close his eyes and sleep for awhile just like he did when he was under his heat lamp soaking up the heat. after i would watch tv or somthing and pet him.even after i would get up to get a drink or somthing he would not flee either, like he did any other time i tried to realy do anything, it was about the only time that he would behave in this manner, any other time he would fight tooth and nail if i needed to move him to clean his cage, it was just such a difference that i could only attribute it as he enjoyed it, you could be right and he hated it but for what ever reason chose this was him way of handling that particular instance, everytime i did it, and just agressively attacked me everytime i did anything else he didnt like, but this does not sound right does it? you think maybe this nile i had did actually not mind the cleaning and most dont like it?

bighog85 · 10-30-10, 09:32 PM

Well he is bigger than I thought he was. I was under the impression that it was quite a young animal. I have seen tractable niles but it is very, very rare and usually they are extremely overweight and unhealthy. It still sounds to me like you are interpreting his behavior in some of these instances as enjoying your company, when 98% of the time their interest is purely food related. There love of food is why it is so essential to use it when trying to acclimate an animal to your presence. I have seen people that think they have an extremely friendly animal when in fact you look at their routine and find out that it directly relates to how the animal is fed or is close enough to make the monitor think that food is involved. Food is what drives these animals in the wild so if they think we have something they are going to investigate. It sounds like you do have a pretty awesome nile, as far as niles go, but you need to be careful in how you read his behavior. These animals can cause MAJOR and permanent damage in a split second so never ever drop your guard.

Freebody · 10-30-10, 11:43 PM

they banned them this year and i gave him to a guy that was given a permit

but oh yeah ! your absolutly right on that note, one day i walked in his cage hes all pissy, he sees i have a big plate a various meat treats i had for him,

hes all nice and calm now, i put the plate down and handing him food and hes eatting, the very second he took the last peice of meat off the plate i was holding, he tail whiped me 2 times so hard and it caught me right on the ridge of the top of his tail where its pointy, split my skin like a cat scratch and left 2 big welps which bruised later from my elbow to almost my wrist in the blink of and eye.... ya he didnt show any sign of nothing till i got hit, then before i could even reflex away he tagged me for round 2, "Oscar" the grouch i called him. i had him from about 1.5 feet. on his good days i could clean him give him a bath, harnes him and walk him around the back yard in the sun, clip the very tips of his nails after he had fallen asleep on the couch with me for 30-40 minutes, them he didnt flich when i grabed at his feet. otherwise those tallons would cut through my skin like a hot knife through butter. sometimes he would see me standing their and he wanted to climb up me like a post.... you cant remove a 4.5 foot nile that wants up...he just grabs on more and after i got 20 holes in my leg, 1 from every claw hes got. and thats on a good day LOL but i realy miss him. mine was in great shape and super healthy as well. i really loved him and made sure he got top notch care like all my animals, i really take everything anyone has to tell me to heart, its trully the only way anyone can help their scaly friends better.

infernalis · 10-31-10, 12:20 AM

Oh yes, I can get Chomper to stand up and do tripods for a snack.

He will often tear his cage apart because he associates that behaviour with getting fed, because we get tired of all the banging noise and simply give in and dump a handful of roaches in there just to make him stop banging and clawing at his cage.

they are so damn smart, it's amazing.