Our Green Iguana- raising him from a juvenile
Owning and raising a Green Iguana- the ongoing quest for knowledge
Their moody dispositions, incredible size and ability to cause serious injury are all the main reasons why most once ‘cute’ looking juvenile green iguanas find themselves being passed on to overburdened pet stores and reptile rescue facilities once they enter their breeding season behavior.
We believe that due to this massive problem, it would be great to provide an ongoing invaluable source of information for prospective and current iguana owners, wishing to learn from our experience of owning a green Iguana. We would like any prospective keepers to take everything into consideration before adopting/buying one of these creatures. They are majestic beasts, and deserve all of your time and attention if you take it upon yourself to take one on board.
Once following a few posts of this blog, you can decide for yourself if you have the resources available to take one of these into your care for what could possibly be the next twenty odd years of your life. We aren’t claiming to be experts, and realise one of the biggest issues with their ownership is complacency, so this exercise is a means of us sharing our experience as well as learning from other people’s approaches and knowledge.
We have owned our beautiful male Green Iguana Jäger since the beginning of 2010.
We were lucky enough to find him young, and after a bit of persuasion we managed to win the confidence of the store staff in being able to purchase and take him home. You will usually find that most stores selling these lizards will bombard you with a tirade of questions to ensure you are prepared, both with regards to your knowledge and practically in terms of the lizards housing and lighting. If they don’t ensure your ability to look after this little fella before leaping out of the shop with him, then I’d question the ethics of the place you are getting the iguana from, in addition to his prior care.
This was Jäger when we first got him, along with his enclosure ( a converted 5.5ft x 3.5ft x 2.5ft wardrobe)
As you can see, though only a little over a foot in length from snout to tail tip, he was already provided a roomy enclosure with adequate lighting and heat. We will further discuss our lighting and heating strategies, along with his diet, taming and socialising in future posts. This is merely to illustrate the initial requirements for a lizard at this size, as of course you are expecting him to grow BIG.
This is Jäger now, a flourishing huge male green Iguana with a lot of strength and a personality to match his enormousness!
This fella no longer lives in that converted wardrobe! He was swiftly moved to a converted space beneath the staircase toward the end of 2010, possibly the beginning of 2011. Since his transition into a larger space, measuring roughly 10ft in height by 3.5ft depth and 8ft width, we began replacing all of our exo terra reptile lighting products with Arcadia bulbs, including a large D3+ basking bulb, and two T5 UVB tubes with reflector, and a ceramic attached to a thermostat to maintain his temperatures. Since then he seems to have blossomed into this beautiful dragon and we are due to move him again into an even bigger enclosure to accommodate his accelerating growth. More to come on that later…
Until next time, happy reptile keeping
Steve and Dawn :)
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