My boy is now a year and 11 months and spoiled rotten. He is 100% part of our household – it took hours and hours each day since he was 5 days old but oh boy it is so worth it. He sometimes goes to work with me, goes with on holidays, help with the shopping and is a local at the sports club. He climbs on my lap/chest each night and watch tv until he falls a sleep and I carry him to bed at about 21:00.


I studied the book called the Green Iguana,The Ultimate Owner's Manual,Author: James W. Hatfield Iii and follow it to the best of my ability and always try and improve. This book says that if you keep an iguana in a cage with white/blank walls then it is a sentence to hell. For this reason I tried my best to copy his natural environment.

Forest has a room with a tunnel that leads to an outdoor cage. He uses the tunnel when we are at work but he roams free when I am home. Our South African houses are built with bricks and then plastered; therefore I do not have a problem with the high humidity affecting the rest of our house. Another plus point about SA is that we have lots and lots of sun.

It took my husband a month to paint the walls inside the room, a week to build the tunnel and another 2 weeks to build the outdoor cage. (Isn’t he just wonderful!)

We’ve replaced a big section of the door with plexi-glass so he can see us and we can see him.
The walls before we brought the things inside:


The netting against the ceiling is to create a feeling of tree tops. It hides all the wires for the lighting and protects the ceiling from the high humidity.

We chopped down two trees and left it in our swimming pool to kill everything living inside it. It took 6 men to get it into the room! Forest grew up with life plants all around him and therefore I have never had a problem with him eating the plants. All the plants are iguana-safe. He uses the COMPLETE room, every branch, basking ledge and even the ground and windowsill. The same with the outdoor cage, he uses all the ledges and loves laying on the grass.


The idea was to extend his outdoor cage to reach his room but I changed my mind and used the space to build outdoor cages for my dragons.
Here is the loooong tunnel. It only took forest 2 tries to get it right.
Still in progress:

Finished:



I grow all his food, mustard, turnip, rocket etc. and I’ve planted hibiscus, nasturtium and lots more in his outdoor cage.


Wow, that was a mouth full, I hope you liked it!

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