the "ideal" growth rate is what is found in the wild? really? have you thought about that?



by the same logic, then we should kill off 70-80% of captive Uro babies because there is a high mortality rate in the wild as well... (but that's a crappy ideal, and poor logic)



wild Uros have to battle predators, parasites, droughts, floods, food shortages, other Uros, and human collection, among other things. that doesn't really sound ideal, does it?



each Uro has potential stored within it by nature, a vast potential. nature's hope is that at least a few Uros in a given group will survive life's deadly obstacle course long enough to reproduce. there is nothing "ideal" about that at all.



the Uros themselves have evolved and adapted to live well in their given environment, and then battle all the troubles. your goal as a reptile keeper/hobbyist/enthusiast should be to provide as ideal an environment as possible, without the troubles, and let them do their thing.



our human population is based on a few of us getting hit by buses everyday. that doesn't make kissing the underside of a bus ideal.



if you are involved in the market, perhaps you have seen the thousands of wild caught Uros that come in all the time, or perhaps you have seen the photos of the markets still in Afrika that sell Uros. none of those animals look anything close to ideal. most look "mostly dead", and you know what they say about "mostly dead"...



as for your second piece of mind bending logic...



just because soil is "hard to do" doesn't mean you shouldn't or can't do it...



newspaper is easy, it is easy to clean, easy to keep dry (so what?), so once again, following your train of thought, it must be the best thing ever.



if you can't keep your soil moist, that is your shortcoming, you just need to learn more about it (cut down ventilation perhaps).



if keeping Uros properly is "so hard", folks should get rid of their animals and instead consider taxidermy, the husbandry is easier this way.



i don't mean to be short, and it isn't personal, but good grief, i have spent an hour and half typing on this forum today, and it seems to sail over the heads of folks who don't seem to want to stop and think...



stuck in a rut! stuck in a rut! think outside the dumb box!



when we were busy breeding monitors successfully, we had a large group of Gilas set up really poorly. newspaper substrates, thin aspen or cypress, feeding once a week, keeping them just like kingsnakes, breeding poorly, just like everyone did it, the "accepted way". really REALLY stupid!



one day walking by the Gila setups, Chad and i literally received a cinder block thought to the brain, and we felt like complete idiots keeping Gilas like anything else than the lizards they are. keeping them just like the monitors, just like the Uros, just like Beardeds (a whole 'nother forum), just like any other lizard.



i took that thought, and tried to re-think all of the animals.



apparently you are a monitor guy (Ackies), have you heard the monitor expression of "reading" the animals? if you read the Uros, set up in poor, but accepted standard, conditions, they are SCREAMING at you to fix it and provide a setup much more along the lines of a monitor setup than a goofy kingsnake!



this is the most frustrating part. the Uros are telling EVERYONE what needs to be done, it is just that most folks are not able to hear and read them.



i can read posts on this forum, just a short paragraph, and read the owner's Uros through his own poorly written post, it isn't hard AT ALL once you learn to do it.



wake up folks, hear what is going on...



(and get rid of the dry assss substrates!)
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robyn@proexotics.com



Pro Exotics Reptiles

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