How big are they these days? I wouldn't be looking for hemipenes yet, they're still very young to be showing them, and they don't do it every time they go. Really the only way to know for sure it's a female is to have it lay eggs.
My Little Monsters
- Thread starter Wiggles92
- Start date
They each put on a few inches since I got them. Ended up trading the three smallest ones today at the reptile after they were going at it this morning; this decision was coupled with the fact that there is no need for more Nile monitors in the trade therefore I should't breed them.
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It's best not for there to be too many, to lessen the odds of it going to a little kid who has no idea how to take care of it
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Well said, though it could be looked at in another way: If you breed them, captive bred babies will always be more preferable to WC or CH babies. So by taking sales from dealers selling WC/CH individuals, you could end up encouraging people to captive breed them.
To put it simply, if enough captive bred babies were produced, the WC/CH trade could become unsustainable, and would be lessened by quite a lot. Better to have lots of captive bred babies floating around than lots of WC/CH ones, IMO.
To put it simply, if enough captive bred babies were produced, the WC/CH trade could become unsustainable, and would be lessened by quite a lot. Better to have lots of captive bred babies floating around than lots of WC/CH ones, IMO.
Valid point. However, the CBB trade will not be sustainable so long as CBB babies cost more than WC/CH babies as there are few people that actually are willing to pay more for them considering that very few monitor people are willing to keep this species.
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Very true, but I'm confident you could still sell them all quite fast. Anyone who knows how much of a difference being captive bred makes won't mind paying double the cost.. Of course, that's if you're even charging any more than is usually charged. They could just be sold for the same price.
Bottom like is there's pros and cons to breeding them. Though I would point out, not breeding them won't even make a noticeable dent in the numbers, but if you could get people to see how much better captive bred ones are, they might look closer into the species' requirements or at the very least, hold out on buying one until they found a captive bred one, which would in turn mean that they couldn't sell as many WC/CH ones, meaning they wouldn't get as many to sell. Personally I plan to breed them along with the other commonly WC/CH species, though not in mass quantities.
Here's a quick update:
Now that its been by itself for over a month now, my Nile monitor has gone from being fine with my presence to where it now darts into its burrow as soon as it sees me move.
Today I just said, "Screw it," and dug it out of its burrow since I haven't been able to decently measure it in many weeks, and it is 18" long including the tail. I think that its a bit smaller than it should be for its age despite it having proper diet, temperatures, humidity, & space, but I'm wondering if it's from a shipment of runts which could explain the slow growth rate. It seems to be shedding fine, though, as I will find large & small pieces of shed all over the cage every few weeks. At one point, I thought it had a bad shed & lost a toe tip, but it now appears that the toe nail must have been broken off rather than the whole toe tip as the toe nail is growing back; I suspect that it may have come off during a fight with its previous "friends" before I traded them due to their increased aggression levels.
Now that its been by itself for over a month now, my Nile monitor has gone from being fine with my presence to where it now darts into its burrow as soon as it sees me move.
Today I just said, "Screw it," and dug it out of its burrow since I haven't been able to decently measure it in many weeks, and it is 18" long including the tail. I think that its a bit smaller than it should be for its age despite it having proper diet, temperatures, humidity, & space, but I'm wondering if it's from a shipment of runts which could explain the slow growth rate. It seems to be shedding fine, though, as I will find large & small pieces of shed all over the cage every few weeks. At one point, I thought it had a bad shed & lost a toe tip, but it now appears that the toe nail must have been broken off rather than the whole toe tip as the toe nail is growing back; I suspect that it may have come off during a fight with its previous "friends" before I traded them due to their increased aggression levels.
That's an interesting observation, that they were much bolder when kept in a group. Thank you for that.
He may very well be a runt, or depending on how long he has been in captivity, could have been kept badly before you got him, stunting his growth. Or, he could be about to hit a big growth spurt. My money's on the last possibility, LOL. Keep us updated!
He may very well be a runt, or depending on how long he has been in captivity, could have been kept badly before you got him, stunting his growth. Or, he could be about to hit a big growth spurt. My money's on the last possibility, LOL. Keep us updated!
I think that their competition with each other for food, territory, & so on made them focus more on each other than on me; there isn't really anything else to focus on now that it's just the one in there.
I highly doubt that it was given very good care by the vendor that I got it from, but I doubt that would have a major effect a little over four months later.
I forget what I said their original lengths were, but I believe this one was in the 10-12" range when I got it, so it's been growing at a rate of around 1.5-2" a month when it should be growing at a rate of 2-3" a month; if it had grown at the optimal rate, then it would've been in the 18-24" range by now. My goal is to have it to a size that will allow me to determine the gender before the end of the year, so it needs to cooperate & hit a big growth spurt!
