Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Also, underneath the board is his mate and she is gravid. The pics of argus hatching I posted down below, are offspring of these. Both were raised inside on mice.

You can plainly see how much it was effected by such a diet. F

Frank you should be ashamed to post a picture of such a sickly looking animal...hahaha. I have to agree that mice is the best staple diet for many monitors, and especially argus. I believe that if we are going to keep monitors and allow them to be successful we must be able to read the animals. There is not any indication that your male argus is in need of a more varied diet. He appears 100% healthy, has good muscle tone, and has already reproduced, so where is there a problem. If mice allow the monitors to thrive, grow, reproduce, and simply be monitors then why would we need to feed anything else. I have yet to see any negative effects of a diet consisting primarily of mice. The old saying goes...If it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Gouldi complex cross.

jeremy, how many monitors have you bred? i tend to agree with what you are saying. to use argus for an instance, mine also is growing very quickly (the one i bred and held back out of my first clutch and am now raising with a goulds/flavi cross). it was very funny here at first though with this one. she started out on crickets, then crix and pinks and then fuzzies for a couple days, then for the hell of it i put in two adult frozen thawed mice, the goulds cross and argus both took one down (about 14-16 inches, both monitors). i was just wondering what experience you have with this or if you only have experience with adult monitors and dwarfs. cheers, andrew
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Varanus Creations

First things first, I can't say "I" and leave out my partner. Anything produced by us is as much him as me, if not more. He has been in this longer than me, and I have learned 90% of what I do know from him. That being said, we have bred ackies and timors (timors before I started working with him) successfully. My partner hatched dumerils before I started working with him, unfortunately the two that hatched died shortly after. I have received eggs from whitethroats, but my inexperience at the time made for a sad learning experience where I lost all of the eggs. This year we have already produced ackies. Currently, we have 52 ackie eggs incubating and 51 flavi/argus cross eggs incubating. All of our adults with the exception of one cross and one flavi were raised by us since they were hatchlings. We too fed dusted crickets as a staple until the animals gained some size. Even when the monitors started on pinkies, we still fed crickets as well. As the monitors grew, they became less interested in crickets and we switched to primarily a rodent diet. All of our ackies are fed dusted crickets instead of mice. We only use the mice for the larger species.
Jeremy Myers
http://brreptilesandrodents.com

i know what you mean about having partners. my partner, jose has never bred monitors (the argus there are breeding now, but until they hatch, jose has not bred monitors), he is attempting to. is that not the same with you? i am having him raise up animals, because he is good at it (he keeps the jungle carpets, a female bredls, the ornates and the adult argus), i keep the other breeders here, because they breed here, nothing i do. it is like jose can get a picky bredls python to feed well, i can't. it is nice to have somebody to do this with to compliment abilities and to have fun in it all with, but i stress i really dont think breeding monitors is a big deal, it is just fun, the monitors like to breed and do it, i just put em together and keep them healthy. tell me what you think, if you have thought of this, if breeding monitors is nothing we really do, then what is it? the only conclusion i have come to is paying attention to details, in other words, taking care of the monitors well, consistently, i don't know.

andrew
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Varanus Creations

I know what you mean about breeding. It is not a big deal really, but we (especially me) make it a big deal. We have females at both facilities (mine and my partners), and we have moved males between the two. We have eggs incubating from females at both facilities. And honestly, it is nothing that my partner or I have done. We simply try our best to meet the needs of our animals and keep them healthy. I believe it is natural for them to breed. They do it because we allow them too. They are healthy and we try to keep stress to a minimum, and that is all we do. They do all the work. I have a monitor that has laid two clutches since April and is now cycling again. My partner has one that is gravid with her 5th clutch in seven months time. We didn't do that, they did...and I thank them every day.