Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is a bit complicated for me. I am not home during the day to watch my Ackie trio. I do notice this assumed female out on the basking rock a lot more over the last week and suddenly very distended in the belly. I believe she is gravid. She is still basking at 5:00 when i get home while the male and other female are long gone in the tunnels. She is normally very shy. I have not witnessed breeding, but haven't really been able to. Anyone who's bred Ackies: Can they be at it already at 16" total length female who was born in July 06? It just seems a bit early. The male is substantially larger and has firm cloacal spurs and a very massive head.

The other issue is digging up eggs in the cage. My housing is 5 or 6 feet long and a foot of dirt. Here's a pic i snapped a couple minutes ago.

First off, no excuses, when a female cycles and copulates, they do so, 24/7 for 3 to 5 days, SO you cannot miss it. Unless you go longer then that without looking at them. They also copulate right out in the open.

Also, males do not have to be bigger or have massive heads, not young ones. The statements you made are more accurate with older individuals.

The picture you show appears to have a young female who may be getting into condition(fat buildup). As soon as she does, she will seek a nesting area. She will dig burrows and cover them only to dig them up the next day, so on and so forth. Also at that time she will emitt pheromones and the male will copulate for the above mentioned time period. Then he will completely stop. Once the ovum drops and enlarges, you can easily see them in her belly. You can even count them. The closer she is to laying, the easier they are to see. As she gets near laying, she will use her last fat stores(in the skin) and viewing the eggs is so very easy. At that size, she normally will have about 8 to 12 eggs.

Depending on how suitable the nesting is, she will lay from 8 days to 30 days after copulation. Somewhere are that thirty days, the eggs will start to fail insider her and she will drop them.

Her job as mother is to hide her eggs from trouble and in a place they will hatch. So you better expect to dig the whole cage up. Heck, sometimes twice before you find the eggs. Many have have dug two, three times then found them(admit it RSG) hahahahahahahahaha.

You see the actual practice of making pretty cages with plants and all such, quickly changes when your successful. As they can lay eggs so darn often the cage never ever stays nice. Your constantly digging it up. If you continue to allow those things to reproduce, the cage will always be ruined. So somehow you have to stop them in order to return the cage to looking pretty. Monitors are the devils spawn, always ruining cages.

I have bred red ackies(and that is what you have) as young as 6 months of age and as small as 13 total inches. I have bred yellows at a grand total of 11 inches in TOTAL lenght. I have had many of the smaller species, V.kingorum, caudolineatus, storri, gilleni, pilbarensis, reproduce as fast as 4 months of age. That is, egg to egg.

So yours at 14 months and 16 inches are right in prime ripe condition to reproduce. Congrats of doing a great job with them. Cheers

Thank you FR. That information is excellent. I'm cutting and pasting it to a file for future reference. She is 7 months old, though ...July,aug,sept,oct,nov,dec,jan,feb....yeah, 7 months. But it appears the Odatriads get to breeding very quickly in life from your accounts. I had a feeling the cage would be getting trashed when i start digging. It looked nice for a while. And the preovulation fat storage makes perfect sense and explains why i don't see them doing the nasty. thanks again. I'm going to photograph the whole process as i go. I'll post pertinent pics as i get them. Thanks again. -j

All varanids I have worked with mature in a year or less, and that includes Lacies, albigs, and even croc monitors.

Most of the mid sized types like the gouldi complex mature in the same 6 to 7 month area. The very first female Flavi I hatched produced her second clutch on her 7 month birthday.

On our site, I just posted a few pics of that fat and eggs as seen from live healthy monitors. Cheers

I had an Argus female cycle at 11 months a couple years ago. I was just amazed that these Ackies are doing it so early, but i guess proper temps and heavy feeding get them to size earlier. It's all new to me w/ the Ackies so it's still a novelty. Cheers. -j