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Monitor eggs!

J

JM :o)

New member
What an exciting week! Goblyn (black rough neck monitor) is laying eggs!! I'm so excited! She deposited two out in the cage~ which I don't think is a good thing~ but now she is down in a burrow and I am hoping she is depositing the rest of a good clutch of eggs!
One of the eggs that was just in the cage
eggs1.jpg

Rico and Goblyn working on fertility on June 6th (they really worked on fertility a LOT in June)
breeding2.jpg
 
LOL! I don't even know if they are fertile or not! I candled the first two eggs but I did not see any veins. I'm hoping they just need a little time~ sometimes I can't see veins in corn eggs right away either.

And I don't even know IF fertile monitor eggs have veins (they should don't ya think?) or what temp to incubate them or how long they will need to incubate! There seems to be a real lack of reliable info available~ and the info that is available is contradictory from one source to another. I plan to incubate at 86F and expect them to hatch anywhere from 2 to 6 to 9 months from now IF they are fertile!

Nice camera set up though! You can take pics of the critters any time!
 
Sweet!!!!!!!!!!!
Make them hatch in a month I want to see them :crazy02:

So Jen when you going to bring that contraption down here to take pics

TIM
 
xXMetalsAngelXx said:
Sweet!!!!!!!!!!!
Make them hatch in a month I want to see them :crazy02:

So Jen when you going to bring that contraption down here to take pics

TIM
Click to expand...

Absolutely! It's not real big...it's perfect for snakes and such. If I can't take any home, at least I get to take cool pictures...or something...hahahaha.
 
Ten eggs all together! I'm not holding out much hope for them as she dropped them all over the cage rather than building a nice nest~ but they are a week old today and all still look good. Guess we'll see in 6-9 months!
eggs2.jpg
 
Cheryl,
Would you recommend black necks for a relatively new lizard keeper? The only lizard I have kept before is a bearded dragon. I like black necks and argentine tegus. Any thoughts?

John
 
Well~ I don't know that I'm a really good person to ask. Rico (the male roughneck) was the first lizard I ever got.

They get big. Not monstrous like some monitors do~ but big. The size of a small cat~ and then a lot of tail! They take up quite a bit of room~ they are semi-arboreal so you use height as well as depth in the cage. My two don't bite~ but they hiss a lot and do tail whip. They eat A LOT! 3-6 mice or 2-3 rat pups EVERY day~ and they poop A LOT! I keep a pan of water in the cage we call "the toilet" and I have to clean it out every day~ sometimes a couple times a day.
 
Congrats! Here's to hoping they are viable eggs! :cheers: The pictures of your pair on your website are adorable..Rico is quite the suave manly monitor! =)

Cheryl, do you have any monitor information websites you could recommend? While I had never really paid much attention to monitors before, I recently saw a black tree monitor that really caught my eye so I want to learn a lot more about monitors in general (I'm always "window shopping", hehe). Any recommendations would be great! Thanks! =D
 
Cassandra,
Wish I could help you out~ but I just don't really know any good sites. I go to KS and ask questions sometimes. There is one gentleman there that seems to know a lot~ but he is pretty "rough on the edges" and intimidates me somewhat~ so I just don't ask many questions. I've done a lot of searching of websites~ and from what I can see whatever you read on one website will be contradicted on the very next site you read! I'm just kind of flying by the seat of my pants here and hoping for the best! Rico and Goblyn seem to be healthy and growing (and producing eggs) so I must be doing something right. I get advice from The Creature Co sometimes (they gave Rico to my husband as a birthday gift in 04')~ but they mostly keep larger monitors.

There was a big article in Reptiles magazine a month or two ago on Green Tree Monitors. I believe (not sure) that they are fairly closely related to the black tree monitors. You might be able to get some info there.

Good luck!
 
ugh...

JM :o) said:
They eat A LOT! 3-6 mice or 2-3 rat pups EVERY day~ and they poop A LOT! I keep a pan of water in the cage we call "the toilet" and I have to clean it out every day~ sometimes a couple times a day.
Click to expand...

6 mice a day? They must consume more food per pound of bodyweight than any other animal on this friggin planet. Thats just ridiculous... that has got to cost you thousands of bucks a year per monitor, just in food alone.

damn...

I assume you breed the mice?

Good luck with your eggs... I just had all 7 of my rough green snakes hatch successfully and all are eating like little pigs. So far I am perfect on hatching eggs (7/7) haha. I think I got pretty lucky. Except the female died about 2 weeks after laying... I guess its natures way of bartering or something, trade one for seven new ones.
:shrugs: :sobstory:
 
Bummer about your female snake. Glad to hear your babies are doing well though.

6 mice a day is not every day. Usually they take 3 each~ but would take more if it were offered. Some days I have to let Rico have 4 just so Goblyn can have 3~ he eats faster than her ~ and she gets NASTY if he comes over to steel her food~ so I have to keep him busy while she eats. Often I try to get him to chase his dead mice while Goblyn just eats hers. Lately though~ I knew Goblyn was cooking those eggs~ so I've been letting her have pretty much as much as she wants~ and what she wants is 6 mice in a sitting! Same now after the eggs~ but once I see her put some of her weight back on I'll move her back to the 3 mice or two rat crawlers a day.

Yes~ I breed my own mice~ or it would surely be cost prohibitive! I tried feeding them boiled eggs to supplement.....they like the eggs.....but it makes the feces stink even more and is harder to keep them from fighting over. So we mostly just do mice. I know they will also eat cooked chicken~ and I've heard they will eat shell fish.
 
pro-exotics has a good care sheet for monitors you could try them or ask bob at treemonitors.com he mmight be able to help you out.
 
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