Rescued a Savannah this week

[karmak]

So I brought a 3 year old Savannah into my life this week. He is my first monitor I have owned. I took him on because he is sick (mouth rott and very stunted for his age. He is 14 inches and 3-4 years old). He has been started on daily baytril (antibiotic) and is eating like a champ. I have humidity and heat up high.
I've been researching ally but I guess any advice is helpful!
Do you guys handle your monitors a lot ? Or at all?
How much do you feed a day? If I were to buy roaches, how many a day?
I would love to hear about your monitors and what you do with this since this is all new for me!
Thanks so much guys.

[Craiga 01453]

sorry, no experience with monitors, but wanted to wish you luck. I hope it all works out well for you both!!! Good on you for helping him out.

[Kerol]

Hi,
I wish you best of luck! I highly recommend you varanus.net forum. It is the forum of Frank Retes, first and biggest monitor breeder of the US. He used to post a lot to kingsnake monitor forum. I would say feed as much as it eats for now. Keep some crickets and/or roaches in his tank always available. You can also give occasionally mice. Monitors need basking spot 110-140 F. You can easily make him retes boards to facilitate thermoregulation, even when hiding in different temperature range. Give him deep dirt for digging and for keeping humidity. If you have screen top its better to cover it, as it dries out the cage totally. Can you describe or post a photo of your cage? I wouldn't stressing him with handling until he is not back into health again.

[jclaiborne]

As already stated, avoid handling, I hope you don't have him in a tiny cage, since they require such a hot spot you need a large cage with deep substrate to achieve the proper temperature gradient. The deep substrate also aids in hydration. When healthy these are active animals I hope you are ready to start building that 8x4x4ft cage.