Captive
husbandry

Key factors for successful breeding

healthy animals
It is absolutely necessary, that only healthy animals will be used for breeding. In some species, especially the Australian ones, it is very hard to get access to a bigger number of specimen, so we are always dealing with a very limited gene-pool. Nevertheless it is very important to try to breed these animals.
animals from
the same locality

When we start a breeding programm with wild cought animals, we have to take care, that the specimen are from the same locality. If the specieshas only a very limited distribution, than it is very easy to organize breeding groups, but if species have a very wide distribution area, sometimes from different climatic zones (e.g. V. salvator, V. varius, V. acanthurus), you will have great problems to synchronize these animals.
So the easiest way to get rid of this problem is, to purchase offspring form one clutch. Here you can be sure, these animals will breed again in some years.


sufficient
vitamins and
minerals

To keep your animals healthy, you have to feed some vitamins and minerals to them. It is recommended to add these supplements yearround to both sexes, not only before and after the female dropped the eggs. The easiest way to give these supplements is to powder the insects you are feeding. If the animals are in good conditions, they will take these insects immediately, so they will get enough of the vitamins and minerals.
We prefer to powder the insects with Korvimin ZVT® and Nekton MSA®. Feeding mice, we inject some Multimuslin® into each mouse.


sexuell
synchronisation

One of the major factors to get animals in a reproduction cycle is to synchronise both sexes. There are several methods to organize such a sexuell synchronisation:

daylength

Changing the daylength over the seasons may induce a synchronisation. You have to know, where your animals originate from, then you can check, how the daylength will vary over the year at this locality. Now you can change the photoperiod over the year.

hibernation

Another good method to synchronize the adult monitors is to hybernate them. But here you must have a closer look to the latitude of locatilies, where the animals normally live. A hybernation is only recommended for animals from areas, where there are temperatures below 10°C during winter (e.g. V. griseus, V. albigularis, V. varius, V. rosenbergi).

raining period

If you keep goannas from the tropical rainforest areas (e.g. Cape York Peninsula of Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia), the seasonal changings between a dry period and a period with heavy rain and a very high humidity could be the inducing factor for these animals.
To keep up the humidity in the enclosure, you can use an ultrasonic humidifier, which is switched on several time during the day, or you can use the less expensive way and spray water over the plants, branches, and cork plates. Also a big water bowl, which is placed over a heating mat will increase the humidity.
During the "dry season" you only have to reduce these actions.

occasionally separation

Also a good method to get your animals in a breeding mood is to separate the sexes for some times. That may differe from species to species and can last from some days for animals, which are not aggressive to each other, up to several weeks and months. In some species it is recommended to keep the sexes separate, only during a mating you will keep them together. This procedure may be done in V.storri and V. prasinus, because V. storri is very aggressive and in V. prasinus the females sometimes are stressed very easily.


suitable
egg-laying box

egg-layin boxMost problems with egg-binding in monitors arrise, because of the lack of suitable egg-laying boxes. And it is very easy to provide correct spots. Reptiles do not expect high standards in the equipment of this box. It can be build as simple as a nesting box for parrots made out of wooden planks or a hollow trunk with a loop-hole in the front. These boxes are suitable for monitors like V. prasinus, V. scalaris, or other tree climbers from the tropical areas.
If you keep monitors from the dry, desert like areas, e.g. V. acanthurus, V. tristis etc., you can use a plastic box, which has a loop-hole in the top. You also can build a rock like nesting box, as shown here
Essentiell for a good egg-laying box is, that inside this box a temperature gradient is available. One of the mistakes made by the keepers is, that most of them use a heating mat or cable underneath this box to increase the temperature. Tis is not physiological for the animals. In the wild the temperature decreases from the top to the bottom.
To indroduce this, I would prefer to put a low watt heating mat on one side of this nesting box. So an almost physiological temperature gradient will be available.
The only care, which a female monitor can give to the eggs is to point out the right spot for the egg deposition. So it is in our responsibility to provide the animals with the very best possibility for egg deposition.
There is no rule for the substrate, you will use, but we recommend to use wood chips for monitors from rainforest areas like V. prasinus, because this substrate keeps moisture very long. Damp sand may be used for goannas from the other distributions.
In both methods it is good, if you will lay a piece of cork on top of the substrate, so that the animals can dig into the substrate, without collapsing of the substrate.

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