Hello,
I have a baby Blackthroat. He's eating two large adult mice per day now. I pick him up and hold him against my chest, holding him there until he seems to calm a little. Then I gently put him back. This is my first monitor, and his persistance at whipping concerns me. IMO (no doubt wrong) by now he should associate my hand with good (food). But I don't know about taming monitors. Should I do as I would with an aggressive iguana, and pick him up every day until he calms down about it? When he's 40 pounds, I hope to have an amicable relationship with him/her. I need your advice.
He has a good burrow that he spends much of the time laying with part of the front of his body exposed. Other times he completely hides. He also likes to stay on top, wrapped around his water pool, hiding behind it. It's about exactly 85F in the area of his burrow. I use Spyder Robotics thermostats, which I think are just great, much better than the chancy make-and-break mechanical thermostats (I had one stick "on" once, with resulting disaster). I keep it 85 at night. The daytime warm zone reads 140F on newspaper directly under the heater with a non-contact thermometer. He won't lay directly in the warmest area. Sometimes he gets up and moves close to the heater, and lays there, not seeming to mind the exposure. He lives in public, in a 3-1/2 ft long, 24 inch wide homemede glass tank to the left of my easy chair, so I get to see all his behaviors. He'll need bigger quarters pretty soon. You guys will probably say bigger right now. He will inherit a bedroom as an adult. But I'm the only person in the house, and he is totally blissful even when I come to sit right next to his cage. OTOH the Jewelled Lacertas on my right get a little jumpy when I go to sit down.
OK, about taming, now lay it on me.
Roger
