A few years ago, we hatched out a banded V.gouldi, The parents were from Riverbanks Zoo. I also have papers(which is not required) I believe those are offspring From Dalles zoo, But I do not care.
This gouldi grew quickly and turned into a very beautiful individual.
Here is the same banded gouldi, grown up. Very handsome animal.
Now, the fact that we bred the parents(not someone else)hatched it and raised it, under our regime of questionable husbandry, does bring up some questions. Also, you must agree, that color is a reflection of health. Also notice, the large temporal bulges(muscle) and the individual is not fat. While I really have nothing against fat individuals, obese is to be avoided(for all the same reasons it should be avoided with any animal)
I feel its my duty to explain, we do not follow any hard fast rule. While others will throw tidbits at us, they normally are wowfully misinformed. For instance, liting. This individual was raised in his first two months, with 25 watt incandesent bulbs, They were on a basic litecycle, off at night, and on in the day. The rack his cage is in(our baby rack) has heat strips, which allows for temperature choices when the lites are out. Then he was moved into raiseup cages that had a 65watt incandesent litebuld on 24/7. Once he was adult size, three months in this cage, then he was moved outside, where half of the year he has no lites(summer sun and related cycle) and in the winter, he has 2 65 watt incandesents and sun on warm days. The diet was mice. (note) in the past we used halogen bulbs, but something changed and the bulbs started burning the monitors, so in the garbage those bulbs went. As anything should go, if it proves delerious. Thanks and enjoy the beautiful monitor(my opinion)
(note #2) banding is a pattern abnormally that occurs with numbers, you have enough or get lucky and oddities(extremes) will happen.
Also, he was raised with other monitors his whole life. Now he lives with a female(that he was not raised with). They get along fine and are of no problems. This year we left the eggs in the ground, hopeing to see little presents pop out one day.
The second one down is his baby from last year, enjoy FR
