Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hellow my name is Joe Gobert and I need some advice. Ive got a pair of CB water monitors that were produced by reptile Guru 3 or 4 years ago. About 1 1/2 years ago the then 3 1/2' female looked graivd, so I placed a nesting box in ther 6x10x7' cage. She went right in and laid four eggs and droped three half sheled eggs on the floor of the cage. Since then she has looked gravid two more times. Bouth times I placed a nest box in ther cage that she would dig in but not lay eggs. She reabsorbed bouth times. She is now 5' long and very gravid looking. I can see the outline of the eggshells on the sides of her belly, and her tail base is thin. in fact she is starting to look like a pleasisaure-small head and tail-very large body. I seperated the male a week ago and gave her a 30"x12"x 40" nest box filled with slightly damp dirt. She spends alot of time digging in it but will not lay. she has probably held on to them to long for them to catch, thats OK I just dont want to loose her. I dont know if they can reabsorb eggs after they have been shelled. The cage has an ambent temp of 80 @ 6' off the floor 70 @ cool side on floor 140 under 250 flood 120 under 150 flood. The substrait is 12" OF dirt. I raised the pair from about 18-20" to female 5' male 6 1/2' on a diet of chicken drumbsticks and whole fresh fish out of my pound. any ideas on how to get her to lay or if she can go on becoming gravid and reabsorbing without it hurting her would be helpfull, thanks.

Hi Joe, Sorry to hear your story. First off, nesting boxes do not work. Oh you can get lucky like you did the first time, but the reason they don't work is what your looking at now.

To be successful with monitors, you have to have sufficent nesting before copulation. THE BIGGER THE BETTER. Monitors normally burrow down several times their body lenght. Which as you can imagine is very difficult to provide for larger monitors. Anything less that that can be risky. So the nesting box you discribed is risky. They also NEED, total darkness.

Once a monitor is in the state you discribed, all you can hope for is survival.

In my experience, monitors only have a few reabsorptions in them, then bad things happen.

A Vet can remove the eggs/oviducts and ovaries, then you will have a healthy female that will not have this reoccur and if you take good care, it will happen again. Having this done is your safest direction.

If you wait it out and hope for the best. Then you risk losing your female. Its your choice. I wish you luck, Cheers

Joe,

What's the temp of the nest box substrate? If the ambient temp of the enclosure is 80F the substrate might be too cool.

Frank has far more experience in this area than most of us but sometimes a nest box is the only option. Crocdoc (user name on another forum) uses a nest box with his Lace monitors with great success. He recommends that the substrate within the nest box be maintained at 86F. In his experience this is the ideal temp for laying.

My Lace monitor dug a very deep burrow several months ago and laid a small clutch of eggs. She dug until she hit 85F (verified with a temp gun).

Good luck and let us know how it goes.

I have had lacies nest in substrate from 60F to 90 F, and many times. My other monitors never nested much below 75F, but that was no problem for them. If you consider, thats over several thousand nestings.

I also find it odd that folks always talk about the best this and that, and then give their monitors a tiny box. Its kinda backwards. IF you WANT to increase your chances of success, you should dwell on the most important parts first, not last.

consider, any nest in captivity is in a nest box, as long as its in a cage, its in a box. The important part is SCALE(hehehe) I guess some boxes are bigger then the other.

I still say, the more choices(more then nesting) a monitor has, the better off that monitor is. Of course, you can be a HUGE genius and know all there is to know, and give(force) them into what YOU want them to do. Then you indeed can say, see my monitor did that. Cheers

If your cage does not have proper nesting beforehand the stress level is high on the female.
I made a decision to create a new cage and move a female that I did not realize was forming eggs into it. The first substrate was wrong, she refused to dig in it, and I had to switch again. At this point in time she was digging like crazy for a few weeks, then stopped, she would not lay. I sought FRs advice on this and Rob Faust (her breeder), after taking her to a vet ASAP and getting xrays done I set up an appointment as soon as the doctor could, to get the eggs removed. Keep in mind that at this point it was just over 3 weeks, the eggs were removed at 4 weeks. I told the doctor to remove her ovaries and prevent any further problems. I know of an example that had a slow recovery after surgery was done to remove them at weeks (the vet said she may have died any day if it wasnt done then, this is why I had it done earlier). This female I mentioned was in shallow substrate and had a nestbox only to pick from (temperature controlled).
The vet removed 44 large eggs (over 5 lbs worth) from a 5.5ft albig. The only real complication was the last egg broke open as it was being removed and her abdomen needed flushed (the only reason she was on antibiotics afterwards).
She recovered very fast, in about a week or so her incision was closed, she ate the morning after sugery and every day afterwards small meals (chicken peeps, 2 of them).In less than a month her stitches had almost al fell out by shedding skin.
I hope that things go well for your monitor.
To this day I still have that female monitor, she was 6.5ft long a while back, and just as calm and friendly as she was from day one.

If I'm not mistaken, didn't you think that Sobek was a male until it surprisingly produced eggs (which subsequently led to reproductive complications)?

Now, under these pretenses, that you believed Sobek to be a male, how much effort or precision could you have possibly put into setting up a proper nest box for an alleged male monitor, considering that you didn't find out that 'he' was in fact a she until she had developed the eggs???

Sobek as a 'male':
forums.kingsnake.com/viewarch.php?id=18037,18037&key=2003

"Sobek, the "male" produces eggs"
forums.kingsnake.com/viewarch.php?id=73258,74067&key=2003