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Posted by Kanuck on April 16, 2003 at 12:31:23:
In Reply to: Re: spotted turtles posted by nathana on April 16, 2003 at 12:03:19:
My goodness Nathan, you are a piece of work. I particularly liked your comment:
"I made no suggestion to belittle your husbandry, and indeed have no idea what it is you do. If there is something you do that makes you feel inadequate about your techniques, I'm sorry, but it has nothing to do with my experience or observation. Please do not try to take it that way."
That was a classic. With skills like that you should go do battle on the monitor forum. I'll just go slink off home now that I've been properly chastised. Just food for thought though. Up here in the great white north many turtles and tortoises have been kept successfully and reproduced to several generations without extensive access to the great outdoors. Frank Retes has done the same with monitor lizards at his breeding facilty. Most of his stock does not have access to natural sunlight. I think that if you can provide an animal with the necessary conditions to grow to an adult and reproduce offspring consistently then you're in the right ballpark. You don't need your own personal marsh to do that in. Gerald Durrel (don't know if you're familiar with him. He was one of the most progressive and successful zoo keepers of the past century with many firsts in captive breeding) suggested that the trick to keeping animals in captivity was to adequately provide for their sense of well being and physical health. If you managed to do that and found the tricks associated with breeding( Hibernation, photoperiod etc.) then you had done all that was necesary to keep animals healthy and happy in captivity. He found it possible to do this without recreating the wild down to the nth detail. So do a lot of other keepers. Think of that before you start telling people that it's your way or nothing.
