Hi guys, I reckon I was the first herp to actually figure out you need to heat these guys to keep them healthy and have them breed.
In the eighties, many people kept monitors, but only housed them as warm as snakes. The result was they were not bred often, and most clutches from those days were from W/C gravid females that dropped after being caught.
During this same time I did a lot of field work up north, and did a lot of observations of monitors in the wild. I would observe species like Storrs and Ackies just sunbaking on rocks for over half an hour. When approached they would dart into a crevice. When I would kneel down on the same rocks that they were just sunning on to look at them in the crevice. I would find that the rocks were so hot your knees would literally stick to the rocks.
So I figured out from these observations that these animals relished the heat. I installed numerous 100watt bulbs in each of my moniotor enclosures, and bought the basking spots up to 50 to 60c. The result was every species I kept started to breed. I would often get comments from ARP keepers that I kept them to hot. My reply was they are breeding and doing well, so I must be doing something wright.
In the early nineties I was the only person producing mass varanid hatchlings. No one else was using my method, so they were not successful. After numerous complaints from keepers inferring I must be doing it illegally my animals were seized by NPWS. People like Steve Irwin and Matt Vincent advised the authorities that it was impossible to breed these in captivity. I was charged and faced court.
In the meantime, Vincent visited a friend of mine in the USA who was using my method. He saw hundreds of hatchlings and finally realised they could be bred. He withdrew from my case and only Irwin testified.
Isn't funny just 10 years later and all common monitors are now bred using my method, even by Irwin and Vincent. Vincent even wrote a book on monitors explaining the breeding concepts, but to this day has never appologised for slandering me as a criminal.
