How to Breed Crocodile Monitors

Crocodile monitors, or Varanus salvadorri, are extremely large lizards that can grow up to eight feet long, making them rare in the pet trade. They have a reputation for being aggressive, and their physical prowess means that they could easily cause harm to a human being, making breeding them a dangerous task. Breeding crocodile monitors is not in itself difficult, but it can be expensive considering the large enclosures required for multiple lizards, and it requires a fair amount of expertise and experience in handling large reptiles. Preferably, you should already have an established crocodile monitor within an enclosure.

Things You'll Need

  • Enclosure
  • Heat lamps
  • Trees, logs, branches
  • Mulch
  • Kiddie pool
  • Breeding pair
  • Plastic trash bin
  • Sphagnum moss
  • Peat moss
  • Sand
  • Styrofoam cups
  • Vermiculite
  • Marker
  • Incubator
  • Juvenile enclosure
Show More

Instructions

    • 1

      Set up the enclosure. The enclosure for a pair of Crocodile monitors needs to be enormous to accommodate their huge size. An enclosure 18 feet long, 10 feet wide and 12 feet high is recommended. Many serious keepers will simply convert a spare room into an enclosure. The enclosure should have a mulch substrate, decorated with artificial trees and logs, a kiddie pool with water for the animals to soak and several heat lamps to provide basking areas and keep the overall temperature of the enclosure around 90 degrees F during the day.

    • 2

      Introduce the breeding pair. The animals can be sexed after they've reached sexual maturity one of two ways. The shape of the heads is a good indicator, as males have larger, wider and broader heads the females. A veterinarian may also check the lizards' blood testosterone levels, as a male's blood contains up to ten times more testosterone than a female's.

    • 3

      Place a nesting box in the enclosure. The nesting box can be an overturned 40-gallon plastic trash bin weighed down in the back with some cinder blocks. Inside, lay a mixture of sphagnum moss, peat moss and dirt or sand. The female, when she's ready to lay her eggs, will bury them in the nesting box, where she'll guard them for several days.

    • 4

      Wait for the male and female to copulate. This could take several days to several months, and there's no real way to induce the breeding cycle with the exception of standard care (keeping the temperature in the enclosure around 90 to 95 degrees F during the day and 70 to 75 degrees F at night). According to Reptile Channel, Crocodile monitors have been known to breed better in natural sunlight, so if natural sunlight is not available, try increasing the amount of UV and UVB lighting in the enclosure to simulate it. The female will lay her eggs around six weeks after copulation.

    • 5

      Count the number of eggs laid, which could be up to 20, and create an incubation box for each one. The incubation box should be a Styrofoam cup filled about halfway with a 50-50 vermiculite and water mixture. These cups will house the eggs as they incubate. The cups need to be fairly wide, almost as large as bowls.

    • 6

      Go into the enclosure and retrieve each egg from the nesting box, immediately placing it right side up (use a marker to mark the top) into its individual incubation box. This can be an extremely dangerous task and should be undertaken with extreme caution. Consider removing the adult Crocodile monitors to a temporary enclosure as you collect the eggs.

    • 7

      Place the incubation cups in a specially designed reptile egg incubator, and set the temperature to 84 degrees F. Mist the eggs with warm water twice a day to keep them moist, but do not use lids, as the condensation that collects on the lid may provide too much moisture and prevent proper air circulation. The eggs should hatch six to eight months later.

    • 8

      Place the juvenile lizards in smaller temporary enclosures set up similarly to their parents' and feed them crickets or pinkie mice until they are large enough to be sold or bred.