Posted by:
FR
at Wed Sep 12 10:48:06 2007 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by FR ]
Nice pics, I love that pic of you daugther, the chair shes sitting on is better used for outdoor cages for monitors. hahahahahahahaha Another recent thread here.
Also I love aplomado falcons, seen a few in So. Ariz. Is that a tricel or falcon?
About Racers and coachwhips, Forget anything you know about them and stick with what you know about birds. Your much better off understanding varanids, coming from a background with birds.
I see your cages are Vision cages. The owner and brain behind that is Scott S. Which brings up my shirt that I was wearing last night while out roadhunting with my good friend(21 snakes) Best night of the year so far.
Scott and I, while on a drunken stupor at an old Orlando show, came up with this idea when discussing monitors. We came up with two reasons I was so successful, particularly in lieu of so many others(huge genius, then all) failures. Please keep in mind two things, drunken stupor and Scott S.
We came up with my famous sayings, "heatum and feedum" and "the more you read, the less you breed"
Sadly, those goofy statements are very very accurate today, which by the way is many many years later.
Why I question your setup is based on the first of those sayings. Heatum and feedum. Monitors REQUIRE, a body temp much like your birds, in fact, nearly EXACTLY the same. Only they do not create that themselves, after all they are reptiles. You must provide that ability for them. Which is where Kansas comes in. Without EXTREME heating, your going to torture monitors. I EXTREME heat our monitors and its already REALLY hot here(Tucson ARIZ). Yet, I still add heat.
I made this statement in 93, and it is still accurate today, if its not 100F(plus/minus, 5 degrees) outside, there is no benefit to keeping monitors outside. Your better off keeping them inside and offerring controlled heat.
The sad part is, air temps are nearly worthless when understanding reptiles, and monitors being creatures of the earth, go by mass temps(earth, inside trees, inside rock mass, etc) And not by air temps. Which again throws Kansas for a loop. Your earth(mass temps) are friggin cold. No matter what the air temps are, its the mass temps that will hold you back.
Something of interest, I am a snake guy, first and foremost. Not a varanid guy. My interests are reptiles, not monitors only. As such, varanid guys do not like me. Monitors are just another reptile. A fun one, but just another reptile. So, coachwhips are heat loving snakes as are all the racers. But sadly, they are still colubrids and work well within the range of all colubrids.
If we keep coachwhips in our monitor room, you know, the room that produces dozens of generations of many species, year after year. They die of toooooooo much heat, just as any other colubrid does. I know, because I tested it. Coachwhips and racers are my FAVORITE snakes in the field. FUN FUN FUN. And pretty too.
Which still brings out my first concern, heat heat heat. Unless you do something different, then I fear you will just have 100,000 sf of varanid killing space.
Of course being reptiles, varanids NEED/REQUIRE, a temp range choice. And many species can take fairly cold temps, to freezing(I tested it too) As long as they can also choose HIGH TEMPS.
And yes, there are species that can tolerate even lower temps, but none understand the length of our north american winters. If they did, they would be feral in other places besides winterless south fla. And yes, Kansas has LONG winters.
Couple that with your dreams of Black waters and blacktrees, who do not understand any winter what so ever. Your going to have to modify your train of thought.
I am still confused with your first post, why do you mention 100,000 sf to be used for getting into monitors in a big way. If thats what your going to do, "forget about it"
Take that little building and modify it, or better yet bulldoze it down and start over with a building "MADE FOR VARANIDS" from the ground up. There is a fella, that occasionally visiteds our forum, JME, that build a nice building for varanids in a cold climate. He did a fairly good job, right(great) idea, wrong materials. But he did not talk to me until after he build the building. Which was a bad idea, as what I hold important is, how the building is built. After all these years, If someone would ask, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY, my anwser would be, I would have made the building TOTALLY different. My cages, my approach, has proven to be good. I have cages that I build in 91, that have produced monitors, unchanged since that time. I am proud of that. I got lucky.
But the building, could have been made a zillion times better and cheaper for that matter.
You see, one more little tiny important factor comes to play. Humidity and moisture. Varanids of all kinds and types, REQUIRE, a fairly high degree of that. If not, they DIE. Which again leads to Kansas, cold and wet, is not a good thing.
If you read the posts concerning all cages for monitors, the experienced all mention, WATERPROOF the cage. That sir, is a common approach with all successful keepers(not merely me)
Which leads back to this, your 100,000 sf, is a 100,000 sf of useless space, until its FIT for varanids. Another negative thought is, as a builder, I understand its far easier to build from the ground up(new construction) then rebuild something that does not work.
So, what questions does this post bring up? Cheers
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RE: Some background - FR, Wed Sep 12 10:48:06 2007
