Do you feed your Sav rodents?

I have had a little Sav for 3 months now. I have been following the recomendations from savannahmonitor.org, that is, not to feed any rodents. The site states that rodents only make up 0.2% of their diet in the wild. Insects and mollusks are the preferred food source. All I have fed for the last 3 months is clams, crickets, super worms, scallops, shrimp, horn worms, and turkey/beef heart mixed together with centrum vitamin crushed in. I also add Reptical calcium supplement. The reason I am asking is that my little Sav looks like he is drunk the last few days. He wobbles back and forth and looks off balance. Is this a vitamin or calcium defficiency? Any suggestion mumps?

What are your temps/humidity at? It could be a myriad of problems.

He is in a 4ft grow up enclosure with a wood top. He is only 8 inches. Has a foot of black dirt for a substrate. Basking temp 120-125 degrees. His hide is on the cool side which is at about 75-80 degrees. humidity is 60-70%. Mist couple times a day. Has a large water dish for drinking and pooping in,haha. I use a 125 watt solarglo mercury vapour bulb. He looks fantastic, really nice colour and he eats like a pig.

For one, raise his temps up, 140 basking surface temp minimum is huge with these guys. The rest of it seems about right for now with him being young. I can say I've had rescued savs with the same problem- however they where fed on a rodent diet. Perhaps mumps or slayer might have some better insight into the exact problem. Mine seemed to be a wait loss thing in all reality. lol

Is there any chance it could be from thiamine deficiency syndrome, also mentioned on sav.org? This can cause uncoordinated movement, and I don't know how common it actually is with Savs, but it's the only thing that pops into mind that is specifically relevent to Savs. Maybe double check the proportions of the different types of food you're feeding and the levels of thiamine?

You may have a real good point there. Just read a few articles and the clams my guy loves so much are high in thiaminase. D'oh
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/ca/volume...thiaminase.htm
The link has a good right up of what critters have a high amount of the stuff. Here I was thinking I was doing such a good job feeding and I wasn't.

The good thing is you spotted the problem and are making progress. :) Many keepers wouldn't notice/care! Hopefully he'll do better with a diet change+bump in basking temp! Good luck!

I hope he gets well and stays healthy for you =)

Short answer no,long answer yes.If that makes any seance.In the wild they rarely eat rodents,birds,Amphibians,or other reptiles.They feed primarily on insects,and snails.Now in captivty we have only two options crickets and roaches.To help meet some of their dietary needs it is OK to feed them a mouse one a week to once every other week.I see you are feeding the sdz.The sdz was designed to meet the same nutritional value of a mouse,but there is way to much room for error,that way not just feed him a mouse.I have seen way to many problems and similar situations like yours to recommend feeding it.You have to get it just right.To much and you will get calcium poisoning,to little calcium deficiency.Now on paper your set up and what you are feeding sound perfect.But I happened to catch this little bit

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Big Dave

His hide is on the cool side which is at about 75-80 degrees.

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One of the causes of calcium deficiency,is the lack of the ability to process calcium with proper temperatures.Your basking temps and all your temp ranges seem fine.The problem is it only works if your monitor is using them.

Baby monitors need security,as in they need the ability to hide though out the temperature gradient.Which means they need to be able to hide on the cool end as well as the hot end.You need to give them the option to hide at the temperature they feel they need to process there food and to achieve daily events.Offering one hide at the cool end means he will hide there and he might not be able to process what he needs.

Now here is what I recommend.Post some pictures of your cage and maybe we can help get you going in the right direction.You seem to be on the right track.The problem is the system are all most all the same for calcium deficiency to much calcium,and that thiaminase

Good luck

Greg

Thank you so much for the info guys. The turkey/beefheart/liver mix is almost the SDZ. This is what I feed my Red Tegu as well. This is what Varnyard Tegus feeds his critters. I put in one Centrum tablet for every 5lbs of mix as per the savannahmonitor.org site.

You have another great point with the hide being on the cool side. For the first 6 weeks I was feeding an empty enclosure :) as the little guy would be in his hide most of the time. He has now started to trust me I think and sticks his head out of the hide when I walk in. He also doesn't run to his hide any more when I enter the room if he is basking. If I am reading you correctly I will place another hide on the warm side of the enclosure as well. I'll try and get some pics up soon but my daughter took the camera on a vacation.

I forgot to mention in the original post that I also feed him snails. I get these from a Chinese supermarket. I crush the shell with a nutcracker as he is still too little to handle that and feed him the meat. It's kinda gross but he seems to enjoy them lol.

Hey Big Dave,

Sounds like the suggestions you've received are a step in the right direction to fixing this wobbly-thing. I've never encountered this problem however.

Do you dust any of the insects with a good calcium/D3 powder? That's the only other suggestion I might have. My ackies won't even look at a cricket if it's not white, lol.

Like Greg suggested, up the temps, provide a hide on the warm end (although I'm surprised he hasn't started digging his own) and post some pics.

Best of luck and keep us posted!

Chris

Almost sounds like MBD..............

Well, it has been 2 months since we had the wobble thing start with Sambucca. I am pleased to anounce he is in excellent shape. I did three things to help the situation, 2 dealing with my husbandry, 1 dealing with his diet. We cut the clams out of his diet and the wobbles almost immediately vanished. If you read this thread you will notice we found out that the clams were high in Thiaminase. I have since found out the longer your clams are frozen the higher the thiaminase gets. The second thing we did was to add another hide. He now has a hide on the hot side and a hide on the cool side. Before I only had a hide on the cool side. Sambucca now resides 90% of the time sticking his head out of the hot hide. The third thing was I removed the single Solarglo 125watt bulb that was on top of his enclosure and put in 2-50 watt floods being controlled by a rheostat inside the enclusure. I am keeping the basking spot at around 140-145 degrees. His growth rate has been incredible and his colours are fantastic. I will post some pics of him soon. Thanks again for all your help :)

I'm glad he's doing so much better! Looking forward to pictures too :)

http://i992.photobucket.com/albums/a...ept2011076.jpg
why do they always get cat fur stuck in their mouth
http://i992.photobucket.com/albums/a...ept2011067.jpg
checking out the reptile room floor, getting ready for tile. As you can probably tell he isn't 8" any more. And look at his colour, all the sav's I've seen in pet stores are a dull grey.

He's gorgeous!

Lookin' good, Dave! :gj:

Nice colors for sure!

Chris

It's ALWAYS good to see a sav bigger than a hatchling. Especially one that looks healthy. :)

mine eats mostly small rabbits chicks rats eggs roaches chicken wings/breast.. and his baskin temp is 115 with a hide box temp at 95 and idk wut humidity i spray his enclosure everycouple days... but ive never had any issuse with my health wise.. and mine gets tons of exercise as he has to climb to the top of the enclosure for the basking spot...

he does have good colors looks close to my big boy
http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e3...519-36-359.jpg
i need a real camera to get some good pics of him