Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey guys how long does it take for a savanah monitor to get full grown?

Depends on the husbandry, but can be full length in a year and they then get thicker/beefier with age. There's a lot of variability to full length on them that is likely genetic and husbandry related.

a sav can achieve mhis major growth in 1 1/2 to 3 years, depending on food rationing and diet. here is a chart of 2 savs for 185 days (unknown age to start) fed once a day all-u-can-eat from their choice of various items.

here's a vid of buzzy:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Rvvxqxm3Q
inspired by nile_keepr...lol

You must have quite the accurate ruler to get measurements to 1/10,000 of an inch,lol....especially with a wriggling lizard.

ah- i get it.
i record to the 1/8th inch. the computer carries it out so many decimals. the measurement recorded was 37 5/8.

the animals were still and stretched out comfortably when measurements were taken, but any individual measurement could be as much as 1/2 inch short if they kinked up any at the time.

new graph today:

(and no, i don't expect em to see 60", but hey- my speedometer goes to 120... there's no good explanation for why the graph goes to 60"

Worthless. Unless you have more then a hundred.

I say monitors reach sexual maturity from 4 months to a year and a have of age. That is if conditions support that.

You see, being reptiles, they are dependant on conditions, whether its in nature or captivity.

ALso each individual responds a bit differently in the same conditions. If you raise a clutch up, each individual will not follow the same growth pattern. Cheers

the original question was:
"hey guys how long does it take for a savanah monitor to get full grown?"

sexual maturity is reached long before full growth.

according to bennett, female savs can be sexually mature at 10.5 inches STL (which size they reach in the second or third year of life in the wild).

-=('anecdotes' is not the plural of 'datum')=-
Lilly's Best Pal
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvBZ6W5ChCs
be still my racing heartrate!

Yes I know, the real answer is, from 6 months to never.

About Daniels information, I really like Daniel. And he has seen gravid females with SVL that you mentioned,(aprox 20" total lenght) But as for how long it takes, he is guessing. Again, Its a range depending of the type of year(wet, dry, fires, floods, etc) And it does vary year to year. So, a range is accurate, a single date is not. Consider, Daniel has never successfully kept any living monitor. He attempted to keep savs, they failed rapidly, so he wrote a book, then another, then another. The last book was written by Daniel, off of Ravis results from one year of success.
If you raise 30 savs in the exact same conditions, you would still recieve a range of results that would vary by 100% or more. Like, one female would cycle at 18" total length at six months of age, and another female in the same cage will cycle her first time at 28 inches and at 2.5 years of age. Now imagine how that would vary if you used different conditions, MANY DIFFERENT variables.

The truth is, the person asking does not keep them monitors like you. Or like I keep my monitors. In fact, there is very little consisitancy in how people keep monitors. Oh except for PETSHOP dogma. Its the most consistant and offers the most failure.

So, to have any degrees of accuracy, you must offer a range of possible times. Or you will be wrong, not matter what yours did. Cheers

just to keep the record straight, here is the quotation from dan & ravi's book:
"Female savannah monitor become sexually mature at a total length of about 27 cm (10.5 inches) and a weight fo 350-500g(12.5-18 ounces), males probably at a slightly larger size. In Ghana they reach this size in the second or third year of life."

so that would have to be a pretty bad typo if what you say is right!

His time in Ghana, tagging and following and handling thousands of specimens probably helped his data on sizes to be more than a guess, but i don't see how successfully breeding savs could have improved his typography or moral worth.

in any case, failure to breed savs (or even to keep them) never was a bar against someone speaking, criticising or giving advice.
anyway, keepers of savs have the obligation to judge as best they can by their own reason and experience - that's life.

I am not sure where you get your information. I got mine from talking directly to Daniel, while we were in the field and at my place.

I was under the impression that he did no field studies. He did monitor the collectors and looked at what they were doing.

At one point we discussed starting a true captive breeding project in one of the countries of concern, he even picked a site. The problem was, the government had no interest in such a project. Why work at something that does not need work. They get Savs from the field and have no need to actually work at it.

A total length of ten inches for a gravid female is very questionable. I recomend going to his site, mampan.com and asking him to confirm it. Also while you have his ear, you can confirm the rest as well. Cheers and enjoy the pic of Daniel on our catch and release study site(18yrs and running on this site)(ours means, my partner and I, not daniel) Cheers

It depends on the set-up and the availability of food. If you feed it nothing but crickets and other inverts it's not going to grow much. I usually feed mine mice and he/she is growing like weed. Also if your set-up is not good he may be stress and not grow as much as a result. Sav likes it hot. I usually provide heat about 95-102 degree for my Sav with cool side at somewhat at room temperature. It's important you have a cool side for your pet to cool down; that's why I opt for a large enclosure with one hot basking spot.

102 is your hot spot for your monitor?
Is this what you offer torts also?
Just curious!

102 is the air temerature not the surface temperature.

THEN WHAT IS THE HOTTES SURFACE TEMP?

I usually don't measure the surface temp. I find if i get it really hot and allowing the rest of the cage to remain somewhat at room temp. my Sav likes it more. I've safe him for a brink of starvation when I got him from a pet shop. I don't know if you remember awhile back when I posted a picture of him. Now he is eating like crazy and growing like weed. He was weak, dehydrated, and would throw up food. I eventually cut down his food because he kept throwing up, but after he was well again, he ate like pig with no problem. He must have gone 5 large fuzzy mice in one sitting and he was a small animal back then.

The cage is big enough with the ambient room temp on the far side that has some hiding places. I also install a fan inside the cage incase on a really hot day. The cage has two air vent one on the bottom at the level of the cage floor on the far cool side to allow cool air to enter and one on the side of the cage wall near the top at the hot spot on the far right.

The wall is cut out the size of the fan so the fan will fit snuggly in it. The fan is on the ground level on the cool side where my Sav hide. On the hot side he has hiding places, too, long large PVC pipes burried deep in the ground throughout the hot spot with an above ground basking platform, which is a stack of stones that sit directly under the light.

Yes all this is nice and sweet, but I asked about the basking temps, the reason I asked is because monitors and torts don’t do well if not provided with 130-150f basking, 90-104f is too low and will not allow your monitors full metabolism, the symptoms are regurgitation, slow digestion, lake of appetite (all my monitors will eat almost every day, often more then once a day) obesity is a sing of low metabolism, slow metabolism leads to chronic dehydration (savannah get a lot of there water intake from food)

I don’t remember you posting about this monitor, usually this is because peoples don’t provide accurate information, so I shut up and ignore them, you know the saying? (you can only help those who want to be helped)

why do you think if you feed it only crickets and other inverts it isnt going to grow much?

Tom

Because rodents are higher in protein, fat, and calcium. Savs are a pretty big species of monitor, they do need something more substantial to build and support a very large body structure. By depriving him of needed calories, protein and calcium for him to grow (like feeding him inverts) into this big animal, is very unhealthy. They need a lot of nutrients from the food they eat to grow big.

>>Because rodents are higher in protein, fat, and calcium. Savs are a pretty big species of monitor, they do need something more substantial to build and support a very large body structure. By depriving him of needed calories, protein and calcium for him to grow (like feeding him inverts) into this big animal, is very unhealthy. They need a lot of nutrients from the food they eat to grow big.

I think you should preface that with IMHO.
My three savs eat probably 1/3-1/2 of their adult diet in inverts and the rest rodents. Up until they were well over a foot long two of them ate nothing but bugs. When my roaches couldn't keep up with them last winter they went to more rodents. While I don't have keen neato growth charts for you I can tell you that they all grew just fine on inverts. I think the reason most folks feed rodents is that it is a PITA to grow enough roaches to satisfy adults over a couple three pounds. And it is harder to contain the bugs while they are being hunted....and that whole roaches loose in the house stigma.
Dead mice and rats won't infest your home.
In the wild they eat primarily bugs. And while in the wild they aren't under the catered too conditions of captivity they aren't obese either. (heaviest from the Daniel and Ravi's book work....4 1/2 # , other info also from there)
I will try to get some body shots of mine (for Mike.....I haven't forgotten). They are 4, 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 # and all grown the first year under different conditions. One imported at a foot, one raised by someone other than myself and one raised by me since neonate. The one I raised didn't eat rodents for the first year at all and then only now and then.....just preferred bugs.
-----
Sonya

I'm not mean. You're just a sissy.
Happy Bunny

man Paradon, you really need to quit giving monitor husbandry advice. No offense intended, you just do not have experience.

Tom