Hi Mikeal, In the begining of our nice thread, I mentioned theory vs. reality. You then mentioned that you are not one to wildly throw around theory. Yet, you are only basing your comments on theory. You are comparing crocs(in croc farms) to monitors, snakes to monitors, etc etc. When its already been clearly stated, that we(and others) have achieved superior success with a diet of mice(for larger varanid species). With that is mind, you seem to be searching and grabbing at straws to support your old fashioned paradigm, that you refuse to shift. Possibly and more accurately, you could and should compare a successful program that uses a varied diet to one with a base diet, that would be interesting and real.



Now heres the point, I never said, mice alone are perfect or best, or never did I recomend them to others as a sole diet. If you and others would bother to read my post, I said I recoment whole prey items. I then mention examples of superior success with a sole diet of mice. I can also mentions superior results with a sole diet of crickets with several species of odatria. With odatria, I rasied a single male ackie(Mt. Isa, morph) to 27 inches TL, in one year. In all aspects this monitor was perfect. Of course thats one example, I have applied this hundreds of times.



About applied knowledge, you must understand, that what I am saying is about results. In our case, hundreds and thousands of results. Even thought I am not a scientist(some academics say) I thought and was taught that science was based on two important things(as it pretains to this subject), being pramatic(to question) and testing and achieving repeatable results. This we have done over and over and over. Therefore, our comments are results of tests and applied husbandry. That is in fact, reality. They are not from investigation of croc farms(which I did) and find it nice that you did investigate them too. I found that the preferred rasie up diet in croc farms was chicken necks and heads, it worked, was cheap, and in the country of investigation, a byproduct that was not in high demand. But I did not use that information in our programs. The reason is clear, I was not interested in the cheapest diet, just a realible diet. As I mentioned, lab mice are easily obtained, easily stored, not exactly cheap, but work solidly with a wide range of normal conditions. Sir, this is not theory, or comparsion its results.



Now back to applied knowledge, as you understand, the level of understanding and methods is a constantly changing thing. It should constantly become better and better as we learn. The problem with varanid husbandry is, its been stuck in the dark ages without progress for decades, thanks to many former and current academics and varaphiles. They constantly publish theory and fodder, that has no bearing to reality. That is, they have no results for actual applied husbandry. They simply live by old wifes tails and old paradigms, and I assume will do so until they die of old age. Of course as a human, you do understand that is relatively normal. Its also normal that the squeaky wheel makes lots and lots of noise and draws attention.



Which brings up a real concern. Why not ask for and look at results, why listen to squeaky wheels, when there are successful longterm results. These results are to be had from various people, in various countries. To be sure, these different programs have slight differences and lots of common ground. Its the researchers task to sort out, which is which.



What seems to be very very important here, is exactly why I recomend a simple straitforward diet. You said, you want to breed clouded monitors, you want to do a release program to re-establish them in certain parts of their range. If this is true, and I will believe this is your intend. You are in the same position as the other newbies. You are in absolute need of gaining as many solid reliable parts of husbandry as you can. So you can work or the real problems. Diet is not a messy problem. its basic and understood, like your croc farms. It does matter if the diet is romantic it merely has to function until you release the offspring. If your really going to do this, you are in absolutely need of a diet thats reliable and not tricky, even if both function the same. In this way, a release program and a commerical program are exactly the same.



You do understand, it always boils down to the humans, us humans will have a far better chance of success if its simple, then if its complicated. So if all things are even close to equal. In a large program its even more important that parts of husbandry are simple. Please keep in mind, the diet of mice as shown to be superior, and not equal. But that is not important. Whats important is longterm application.



I hope you can follow my screwball brain, because if you did, you would see, its leading you to this, results are not theory, they may not be exactly about the animal in question, results are simply about application. If you do not do something, it will not reveal results, its not about knowledge or theory. ITs about the actual doing or applying of the something. This is were the academics and others who offer old paradigm theories fail. They do not apply it, therefore have no results, therefore have to stay in a world of theory.



Now if you would indulge me. In the past we had huge discussions like this. With bigtime academics such as Sam Sweet, a well known varanid researcher. The reason I bring this up is simple, his papers are theory, the reason they are theory is, they are never tested or applied. Of course when I mentioned this to him, he would argue that, of course they were tested, we checked and double checked the math. Do you see the problem? Monitors are not math(yet) to test them you need to apply the princples of your paper and see if it actually works. Of course this is not done. They go to an area, take data, arrange it in a pre-determined fashion, and leave never to come back. I also asked do other colonies, other areas, other habitats preform in the same manner, reflect this same structure. Of course, this was never answered as it would reflect poorly on the author.



How this relates to you, the study was about social structure and population dynamics. The problem with monitors is, they have many different of the above, they change as they age, the young do one thing, then grow into doing something else, then as they grow old, get very solitary and non reproductive. Does this sound strange to you, its about what all animals do. So did he investigate different age groups, different colonies, different locals, no. How this relates to you is, you are going to be faced with these problems, period. There will be no escaping these problems. You will have to learn to master and control your monitors in groups, pairs, breeders, youth, etc. What you do, may or may not reflect what happens in nature, the reason is so simple, its not going to be in nature, at least not at first. If you do not master the captivity part, there will be no second, in nature part. This is the reality and not theory. You have to do step one, to get to step two. If you do not achieve suitable results, there will be no step two, or three or in the end, releasing and establishing of clouded monitors.



With the above said, diet is not a stumbling block is simple and easy to overcome, where the problems will be is in behavior. This will be very difficult. The reasons are clear, in order to reproduce, they have to behave. You cannot breed them alone, they have to become social or socialized, or accustomed, to be with and positively react to eachother. Dead monitors do not reproduce.



Now back to the thread, for newbies to get past being newbies, they need reliable information to start with. Its very hard to be a newbie on quicksand, with nothing solid or reliable. Don't you think. Cheers mate, FR

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