Reptile & Amphibian Forums

how old should ackies be before offering pinky mice to them?
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-Marshall
1.1.0 ball pythons
0.0.1 red ackie

At least a couple days of age, of course you have to offer small pinkies. Cheers

i offered my ackie, which ive had for 2 weeks now, a day old pinkie and it didnt do anything with it. whats goin on? he eats like 4-5 crickets the size of his head a day.
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-Marshall
1.1.0 ball pythons
0.0.1 red ackie

my ackies aren't too keen on thawed turkey or pinks just yet either, but they will eat 8-10 crickets a sitting. I don't know how much pinks and meat would key into an ackies "natural" diet(I believe they feed more off of insects and smaller reptiles, as opposed to mammals and scavenging carrion). To monitors,which are opportunistic, I would think food is food and they would eat what is available regardless, but it could be that the movement of the crickets is just that much more of a feeding response stimulus. I wouldnt worry too much about getting them to feed off pinkies. Supplemented crickets will work just fine.

Don't quote me on this stuff either, if somebody like FR or robyn says otherwise, listen to them

Pee Skid

A few days to 2 weeks on pinkies. But then again they dont eat mice very often at all, mostly crickets, and 2 types of roaches. All insects supplemented with Miner-all Indoor.

I fail to understand your post. You say monitors are oppertunistic, then then say they are not. If they were truely oppertunistic, they would eat pinkies and turkey and anything they have the oppertunitiy to eat. Is that so?

That they are choosing not to is without question indication they are not oppertuntistic. They have perferences. In your case and in marshalls case, your ackies perfer to feed on crickets.

For Marshall, if his ackie is doing good, don't worry about it. As mentioned, ackies do eat pinkies from a few days of age on.

Does any ackie do that? yes and no. It depends on lots of things, from the health of the monitor, to the training of the monitor.

Training, who trained my monitor. hahahahahaha you did, if you feed lots of crickets, your monitor will perfer crickets. If you feed roaches, it may perfer roaches. If you train them on chopped pinkies, they may perfer that. etc. Monitors indeed do this.

Are wild monitors oppertunistic? yes and no. I think healthy stable wild monitors are normally not oppertunistic. That is, they will pass on many food items to secure a certain type of food item. If they are in bad shape(starving) they will not pass on any food item.

Why some academics say they are is from ignorance(why its published). They may study stomach contents. If they do, they have no idea where and when or what the animals were doing. They do not include season, condition, reproductive condition, etc. They look at stomach contents. If there is many different prey items, then they are oppertunistic. They are right in that context.

But if you study the animal in question, at particular seasons and times of the year. You may find them to be very preferenual in their choice of food. In fact, they may be very guided and only seek certain types of foods. This has been my experience.

It also depends on which monitors you study, the sick, weak, solitary nomadic individuals, or the healthy reproductive pairs.

In my case, I choose to compare apples to apples, if I intend to breed them, then I looked at wild breeders. No offense to academics, but our differences in opinion is here. The academics problem is they did not know how to find these animals. But sadly/happily that was not my problem. I had no problem finding pairs, groups, gravid monitors. Of course its far eaiser to find solitary nomadic individuals. They simply walk around until they die, so they are easy to find. Cheers

what is not to understand?