Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been seeing this practice in the past few years that I have been working with alligators and I wonder what more experienced people think of this practice. It seems that there are power feeders that get 4 ft yearlings, natural folks who just go with 'traditional' growth curve, and some who maintain diminutive animals or display.

This seems to be an alligator phenomenon. The display animals appear healthy in every way, have an adequate habitat, eat a healthy diet, but are half the size one would expect for the size.

If I had a question with this topic, I guess it would be: Do you think an animal intentionally kept smaller for its age for display purposes is as healthy as its larger counterparts? Can it attain average adult size later in life if it has no signs of MBD?

In my view it is abhorent. The only way to make an animal small is to intentionally neglect an aspect of it's husbandry. A slow growth rate is usually an indicator that we are doing something incorrectly or an internal problem with the animal. If people do this on purpose they really should change species to a more appropriate smaller animal or not bother with crocs at all.

Just my 2 cents
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CDieter
'Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.'

I'll tell you an interesting story about growth in crocs. On or about 1990 I received a Saltwater Crocodile named Morton from the Gladys Porter Zoo. Morton was then 18 years old BUT only 4-5' long. He had lived with some Phillipine Crocs that were dominant and simply didn't let him eat and kept him afraid. I placed Morton, the dwarf 4' long male C. porosus in his own enclosure outside and Morton took off. I MEAN REALLY TOOK OFF for in two years Morton grew to about 13-14" long and weighed over 600 lbs. It was like he was in suspended animation and man he played catch up quick. Under normal circumstances I would have said it was impossible for one to grow that quick but I saw it with my own eyes. He became the father of many baby porosus and is now at Gatorland. Has anyone else had a similar experience? The Wakiki Aquarium had collected him on Pulau as a hatchling so we knew the exact age of him..That growth rate shocked me and I wonder if that's how they compensate for lean growing years in drought etc?. Anyway that's the story of Morton, a very fine Saltie. He and I used to be good friends...He never once tried to eat me...
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

That is an amazing story, Tom. I have wondered if that sort of growth was possible given that other conditions were ideal (ie no skeletal deformities from MBD, etc).

And not that is related directly to your reply, I just wanted to clarify that I'm not advocating keeping crocs small for the benefit of the owner. I just wanted to see some opinions on the practice from others more experienced than I.

If you did an on line search I'm sure you could get the story as the Wakiki Aquarium actually came to my croc farm, took pics, and wrote an article in their newsletter [not sure exactly where] on Morton and his history...Thanks
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

Hi Tom,

That is an interesting story. I have never seen one recover to that extent but fully understand animals having a much reduced growth rate resulting from conspecific stress. And they really take off when seperated into their own enclosures. We had this happen this year with a few Niles. We seperated the larger from the smaller and within a few weeks it was virtually impossible to distinguish them at a distance.

We have found this less of a problem if the animals are raised together from the start but about the 4-5ft range we still get an issue or two.

But that is really a remarkable Saltie story.
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CDieter
'Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.'

Yes and he was quite friendly. I had him trained if I called his name in a certain tone to run up to me with his huge bulk and flop down inches from my feet and open his mouth. I would then place my hand on his nostril area and open it further and drop the food item in. All the conditioning and training you see Flavio doing was started by me with a 3' piece of PVC pipe and a deep understanding of croc behaviour. I conditioned almost all my crocs to behave as I needed them to on cue. All my 2.4 Cuban Crocs would rush me on cue, stop 3' in front of me in a semicircle and sit down and wait to be individually fed. I originally began this to monitor health and see if any were fighting and had wounds. For over 20 years I studied and bred crocs. It was lots of fun, I learned a lot, and bred 11 species...
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com

I don't think they are as healthy. I think it is simply a testament to the amazing physical fortitude of crocodilians.
Having said that I would have thought that after being fed an inadequate diet for so many years that the animals would be incapable of any appreciable growth (permanently stunted).
Having read Tom's post I'm permanently stunted.
The only thing I can think of in the case of Tom's salt is that he would have been even bigger, if he had been fed an adequate diet.
I have a friend who has a rescue gator. It was supposedly 5 years old when he got it. It was about 2 feet. He thought he could turn it around and now 3 years later it is 2 1/2 feet.
I feel this animal is permanently stunted. It is starting to get it's adult teeth at 2 1/2 feet.
I'm not sure the folks that are stunting these animals are aware of what they are doing. For 2 years in a row now I've picked up Columbian boas while doing fairs in CO.
They were both about 13 years old almost 6 feet long and real thin. Especially the female. Both owners had raised them from babies and their entire adult life they were fed 1 jumbo rat a month. On the one hand they kept a boa alive and "healthy" for 13 years on the other hand they were both pathetically thin.
While they both have eaten more than that with me, not really much more. After 13 years they are not suddenly going to start pounding the rodents. These owners were nice, if sightly uninformed people. I don't think they thought they were stunting these snakes. I certainly didn't have the heart to tell them.
I always thought the first 5 years of a crocs life predetermined how big they would get. I always thought plenty of the right kind of food would allow that croc to get the most from his genetics.
Earlier this summer a friend gave me a Siamese and a Cuban.
They were both yearlings and I felt both were quite undersized.
I started feeding them and they both exploded, especially the Siamese. But even the Cuban had back to back months where he grew 3 inches. D.C.

Morton never grew a lot after that incredible growth spurt and I don't believe he's likely to ever reach a huge adult size of say 18'. In my opinion I don't believe one would ever reach it's full potential either but believe they would reach a size big enough to breed etc....
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Tom Crutchfield
www.tomcrutchfield.com