Simple observation on food and dominance

[Steeve B]

This may help any monitor keeper, someone ask me about this yesterday.

I keep monitors in pairs most of the year, theirs a problem with this however!

Food intake by the female, when I feed my monitors with tongs I will give a piece to the male as he is feeding I offer a piece to the female and offer food again to the male before he goes after what the female is ingesting, by feeding in this manner aim the dominant monitor and both male and female are subordinate animals, therefore aggression is minimised.

On the other hand if you feed the same animals by simply throwing food in there cage or leaving food in a feed bowl for them to feed with, you will have a problem, hers what will happen, the dominant monitor male or female, usually the male will eat most if not all the food, theirs more to this then jut taking all the food, theirs treat display body posture and hissing, all this is signalling touch this food and your in trouble, ultimately the subordinate animal will stress and start to assume a subaltern role full time, very rapidly refusing all food and will no longer be allowed basking site by dominant monitor often are left with the coldest part of the enclosure and start to slowly decline.

Again this post is only to inform you I post this because 80% of monitor keepers have this problem.
Kind regards

[asphyxia]

Thanks for the info Steve, keep it comming, along with the pictures I and am sure every Varanophi finds it informative.

On a personal note, I would enjoy more enclosure pics.


Best Regards
Brian

[norman]

agreed brian... I am very interested in seeing what your larger monitors are housed in... And how you have them set up.
Thanks
Pete

[Steeve B]

Ha-ha thanks glad if you find this informative but aim not quit sure about others, I still can’t figure how these forums work, especially when there’s 100 views and just a few replies to a tread, once I posted my complete way to breeding monitors on cybersalvator, believe it or not it went totally unnoticed.

[vanderkm]

I can only speak for myself, but many times I view threads just to learn about other species that I don't own, cannot really comment on, but want to learn about - just for my interest. While I sometimes say that I appreciate what has been shared, I don't want to fill up the thread with lots of posts, so often lurk. If your posts are drawing lots of views, I expect there are many people who are learning a lot from what you say - your posts typically give me lots to think about - but I don't have monitors (or any lizards) and so will rarely comment. Please continue to offer your insights though - I think they are appreicated by many people.

mary v.

[LdyDrgn]

I happen to your posts extremely informative as well. :) Keep them coming!

[Jezabel]

Steeve, your post are complete and very very very informative!!! I read everything to prepare me to have my first one. I even save your post like this one on my hard drive!!! Keep them comming. :D Oh, and keep the pics comming to...!

[J_Riley]

Originally posted by Steeve B
This may help any monitor keeper, someone ask me about this yesterday.

I keep monitors in pairs most of the year, theirs a problem with this however!

Food intake by the female, when I feed my monitors with tongs I will give a piece to the male as he is feeding I offer a piece to the female and offer food again to the male before he goes after what the female is ingesting, by feeding in this manner aim the dominant monitor and both male and female are subordinate animals, therefore aggression is minimised.

On the other hand if you feed the same animals by simply throwing food in there cage or leaving food in a feed bowl for them to feed with, you will have a problem, hers what will happen, the dominant monitor male or female, usually the male will eat most if not all the food, theirs more to this then jut taking all the food, theirs treat display body posture and hissing, all this is signalling touch this food and your in trouble, ultimately the subordinate animal will stress and start to assume a subaltern role full time, very rapidly refusing all food and will no longer be allowed basking site by dominant monitor often are left with the coldest part of the enclosure and start to slowly decline.

Again this post is only to inform you I post this because 80% of monitor keepers have this problem.
Kind regards

I don't mean to cause a stir, but it would seem to me the obvious solution here would be to house monitors individually and you take the whole dominance thing out of the equation....

[Steeve B]

what you say is 100% accurate, unfortunately this will also reduce all breeding activity, getting monitors going on a breeding cycle requires they spend much time together as a pair and experience all normal varanids behaviour, when kept in confinement such behaviour can easily become deficient or abnormal if you prefer. This problem of confinement isn’t something new in varanids husbandry, otherwise many zoos and private who’d have bred them more often. Kind regards

[J_Riley]

Ahhh, see I never think about breeding my pets, so I don't often consider that side of the equation. Could you not separate them (pull one out into another container or put in a divider) for feeding, or does that mess things up as well?

WHat about monitors that eat prey items too small or delicate for tongs, like juvenile green tree monitors eating crickets? Just feed more than both will eat to ensure each gets some?

[Steeve B]

Most of the time separation for feeding is a problem, as odd at it seems the best male breeders are the dominant males manipulating them automatically puts them back to subaltern statue. And manipulating the female is even worst.

All the prasinus group, when given plenty of crickets (more then they can eat) are highly stressed by the remaining crickets. They then go off fed for few days, ultimately this will lead to a sporadic feeding schedule, growth is considerably slowed and obviously breeding becomes impossible afterwards. The best way to feed these little guys is to offer few and repeat as necessary.
But I understand your point, the problem with supplying plenty of food is you end up with one of the monitors being overfed, as he will take more then needed just because of his dominant statue, the same animal kept single who’d not eat as much.