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Thread: Hello from new tegu owners

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Posts
    2

    Default Hello from new tegu owners

    My husband and I have recently realized that we are more reptile people, than fuzzy critter. After acquiring a year old sulcata, and a leopard gecko, which we immediately fell in love, with we fancied ourselves a tegu. A week ago we purchased a 1 1/2 year old B&W Argentine Male. Though we have immediately fallen in love with our little Thetis, we have developed some concerns. Hopefully you can help us out a bit. We are wondering if we have bit off a little more than we can chew. 1st of all we are concerned about his size. We bought him from a pretty reputable reptile shop, and the owner told us his age is 1 1/2. However, he is only a little over 2', and am reading that that is very small for his age. We are in AZ so I do not believe he has hibernated, or even brumated before. Our second concern is his temperament. I have also been nervous about small lizards. I am very fearful of them being easily injured. For this reason we went for an older tegu who seems much more sturdy you could say. Now however, we are facing the fact that we have a untamed large lizard who can take our finger if he wanted. To be honest we find our selves being more afraid of him than I think he is of us. We are just not quite sure how to approach the situation. We have purchased sturdy gloves, and have been able to quickly grab him gently by his head and hold him for a bit. After a lot of squirming, he does eventually calm down. Is this the best way to tame a larger tegu? We are afraid to put our hands near his mouth to sniff us and get him used to our sent. Any advice would be much appreciated. Just a bit of extra info. He is in a 4x2x2 foot inclosure. He has his basking light and uvb light. We keep the temp at 80, and humidity 80-90%. Also, the tank is the pick is just his eating tank.
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  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    San Antonio,TX
    Posts
    9,505

    Default

    Hi theB's. Welcome to our Tegu forum family and congrats on your new Tegu. It's very nice to see that even he is a wild boy ( in temper ) you are willing to give him a good home. I'm very proud of you two for not wanting to give up. Don't worry, things will get better. If he didn't hibernated or burmated the only other thing that I can think of why he is so small is that the previous owners didn't give him the right basking temps/light ( UVA/UVB ) or keped them off and just turned them on every now and then. And didn't feed him as much as he should of or as often. I'm sure that once he gets the right basking temps and the right lighting and will eat until he is full that he will calm down. It's very good to see that you don't feed him inside of his enclosure. This will help alot. If you are scared getting him out of his enclosure you can put a towel over his head or the entire body and then get him out. It's like with horse. They are less scared/ skittish when they have those blinds on. When your Tegu can't see you he can't get after you . I would try to do this before he basked because they are more slow when they are cold.

    After he ate until he is full I would sit down on the couch. Put a pillow on your lap. Then put the Tegu on the pillow and cover him up with the towel. Put your hand on him and don't move. After he is used to this you can try to pet him. If this works well then you can try to remove the towel ( I wouldn't do this on the first day ). I also recommend to suport his feet/dody when you pick him up. Tegus don't like to have their feet hanging in the air ( they get squirmy like that ). Oh, one more thing before I forget. The basking temps should be between 110 and 115. If you ever feel like bulk ordering the feeder rodents/quail/chicks you can check out the link below. They are great. I have been ordering from them for years now. Good luck with everything.

    http://www.rodentpro.com/products.asp

    This is how they ship their products ( this is a video I made from the shipment I got ):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKhcqfsUNRA
    Rich is not how much you have, or where you are going, or what you are.Rich is who you have beside you.

    Our videos :

    http://www.youtube.com/user/txrepgirl

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Posts
    2

    Default

    Thanks so much for the advice. We tried that today, and it went great. He sat on the pillow for about thirty minutes. After that we removed the towel and he sat on our laps for another half hour and fell asleep. He seems so healthy and his skin looks great, never a bad shed. We are wondering if the reptile place just had his age wrong. Thanks so much again . This seems like a great forum.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Location
    San Antonio,TX
    Posts
    9,505

    Default

    You are very welcome . I'm very happy to hear that it worked out well for you two . That could be one of the reason why your Tegu turned out like that. Maybe they also didn't know how to handle him the right way. Thank you for the kind word . I'm glad you like our forum. I love it, because everyone is very helpful and very friendly. Please keep us posted. Thank you.
    Rich is not how much you have, or where you are going, or what you are.Rich is who you have beside you.

    Our videos :

    http://www.youtube.com/user/txrepgirl

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