Reptile & Amphibian Forums

In layman terms the gilleni are very easy to keep and breed readily and are always ammusing to feed and watch how they are like mini Komodo dragons and eat food items 4 times the size of their heads by riping them apart, yet they are fearless of people and do not bite [in my experiance] they are built like little tanks and get about 12 inches total length, they seem to be the hardiest of the aussie dwarfs in our collection which is limited to V. Pilbarensis,V.Glauerti and the gilleni. Here is a pic of 4 hatchlings. These are not crossed or hybrids which are common in the states.
Best wishes, Robert

Edited on July 31, 2009 at 19:00:42 by PHGinger.

Cool little guys. It would be great to see those become a bit more common in U.S. collections.
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Steve

I think they will be more common in the future, I know our efforts have produced a few collectors with small groups. Hands down they are the best of the dwarfs unless its all about color then the Pilbarensis or Glauerti would hit the nail on the head.
Robert

Nice, you definitely have some gorgeous monitors. I hope you are right and they take off in the coming years as more people breed them.
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Steve

Steve, our monitors are all taking off, we have produced pilbaras every year since 2001 and now glauerti and gilleni, the people who end up with them are given husbandry tecqnics which have worked well for us but somehow they do things differently and not many have really reproduced much. I believe people try to get to creative and come up with some bad ideas that doom thier collection. I adhere to what is natural [as close as possible not straying from the facts] and it works well. Alot of the bad bacteria flora that is really normal in monitors and kept in check with a strong immune system is impaired with stress and poor husbandry. All it takes is one stressfull incident that goes un-noticed and their immune systems can become weak and that bacteria that is kept in check under normal conditions by the immune system can now lead to their demise.
Good luck, Robert

>> All it takes is one stressfull incident that goes un-noticed and their immune systems can become weak and that bacteria that is kept in check under normal conditions by the immune system can now lead to their demise.
>>Good luck, Robert
>>

Excellent point. Poorly kept, or freshly imported monitors will sometimes pass worms that are very visible in defecation. Take that same individual, set them up correctly and a month later you'll be hard pressed to see worms in their droppings without doing a smear under a microscope.
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Mike Heinrich,
Mike@amazontreeboa.org
www.amazontreeboa.org

Oh, I didn't mean to insinuate that yours weren't taking off. It seems to be exactly as you say, there are a few people that do very well with a species and produce tons of them but then most other folks don't. I agree, many time people try to over complicate things and run before they can walk.

cheers
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Steve

Steve, I believe many of the people who do fail could be in this hobby for the money rewards and only provide what they think they need based on what they have read, with some species keeping 1.2 trios is a no no for us. Females create competition between themselves and you will not allow the subordibate female to produce to her full potential and maybe she wont produce at all. All of our enclosures where sexual pairs are kept still allow for natural seperation [by their own choice] with multiple basking areas/visual barriers so even the 1.1 can have their own territories so to speak. All monitors are territorial regardless of their sex so why not give them enough area to allow for what is normal? In the wild they can achieve this but in captivity they are limited to what we give them. As many predators live solitary lives in the wild and only come together for courtship and reproduction is my belief. Even young hatchling monitors when kept in groups will try and copulate with eachother and at this point in their lives is more to prove dominance over one another as males will try and copulate with males. Never under estimate the scent importance of a monitor and they do mark their territories but must have enough room for to do so when keeping multiple monitors together. This is only my opinion and their are others who believe differently and that is fine, we do live in the USA! For me it has been primarily a hobby that can be self supporting. I have seen the results of the largest commercial producer of dwarf monitors and even though they produced alot of the dwarfs I think they did fail in some respects of the primary husbandry after seeing some of thier breeding stock and problems with them.
Best wishes, Robert