Info on sav monitors

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reptileguy2727;4442809; said:
In my experience the healthiest and tamest monitors are fed canned/pouched cat food with powdered supplements sprinkled on top. Live foods increase aggression and greatly increase the likelihood of parasites. There is also the risk of the food biting the monitor (should never matter with proper feeding techniques, but always a risk). Frozen is no better nutritionally and still not 100% parasite proof. Canned kitten food has a lot of nutritional supplements in it to make it a complete diet and balanced diet.
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Nothing like starting in a nutritional hole, and having to dig yourself out with "supplements"......Whole food has everything needed, all in one nutritionally happy package........

Live food doesn't have anything to do with aggression, and parasites are cycled out quicker and more efficiently than anything man made, when proper husbandry is provided......

A "healthy" Monitor will have a rediculous feeding response no matter what.......It can be directed somewhat, but it's still there......
 
Chasing down live animals can't effect aggression toward live aanimals? I have definitely seen it in monitors and fish, you feed nothing but live foods and you will usually have a more aggressive animal than one that is never fed live food. I am not saying your monitor will cozy up with you and your new kitten on the couch like a nice tame dog, but in general you will see a difference.

Supplements are a very important part of any animals diet. Notice how fish foods are not just dried fish. You need more than one ingredient or assorted whole items to get complete and balanced nutrition. Starting with a good staple food and then adding a powdered to supplement to ensure you never have MBD is not bad at all.

"and parasites are cycled out quicker and more efficiently than anything man made", meaning...putting parasites in them is better than food that man has processed in any way?
 
Canned cat food is a horrible diet for a sav, even adult savs are mainly insectivores in the wild and their diet should reflect this in the form of large insects such as roaches. Monitors on cat food only seem more tame because almost all savs on that diet are obese because of the high fat content and don't have the energy to do much in the way of 'aggression'. And a proper diet of insects will very rarely give parasites, and parasites are much easier to treat than the obesity cat food leads to.
 
There is a difference between aggressive and lethargic. All of the monitors I have seen on this diet were active, healthy animals. Not obese and lethargic. They were as healthy as the 'natural' diet monitors I have seen except safer to handle (tamer) and had fewer health problems (including parasites).

I am not saying you can't get healthy monitors with other diets at all, but in my experience a prepared food diet is better.

I would just say consider it, try it, use it as part of a diet, or don't use it at all if you choose to not even try it. It is just one of many successful methods.
 
I know there are guys out there keeping and breeding monitors on prepped diets. Not necessarily catfood, but turkey diet and things like that. Personally I've never had success with it. My monitors would eat it (they'd eat anything pretty much, as would my tegus), but there's a ton of crap in canned cat/dog food that I don't think really belongs in their diet. Also I found that more often than not I got reallllly messy stools when feeding canned diets. I never tried the turkey diet, but that's likely a step up from canned foods since at least you have a good idea what's going into it. But with a smaller collection it never seemed worth the time to make it.

Also something Eric mentioned upthread that I think gets overlooked (a lot, based on the enclosure shots I see posted)...you really want your basking spot to be easily large enough for the monitor (or other reptile for that matter) to get his entire body under it. If the basking spot is only big enough for say half the animal's body to fit under it they will stay there as long as they need to to get their entire body warm, but in the meantime burn the area under the lamp. Just something to watch out for.
 
I'm not saying a prepared diet is bad when the nutrition is correct, I'm saying cat food is bad because of the amount of fat and unnecessary fillers in it. There are prepared monitor diets available that I personally use as well as hardboiled eggs and insects for mine. The ground turkey/centrum vitamin diet is very good as well, many zoos use it for their monitors, the recipe can be found fairly easily on google.
 
^ the only problem I've had with this diet is that it goes bad rather quickly but other than that it's fine.
 
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