:-( Might need to re-home a tegu

[Rhetoric]

Soooo...
Gary has had some dominant behavior with Rango. Every now and then I catch him chasing Rango around and biting at the back of his neck. Rango just tries to hide. I always go over to the enclosure and open one of the doors and Gary always stops and comes over, probably just to see if I have food lol. I don't see this behavior often, I've seen it happen 3 times. Rango never has any injuries, he just seems annoyed.

Today I was changing substrate and adding some more rocks to the enclosures and I thought maybe I would try housing Rango and Guru... They were ok for about a half hour before Guru started doing the same thing, he is much heavier so he was able to actually pin Rango. Needless to say, I split them up right away.
Rango and Gary went back into their original enclosure. I won't try Guru and Gary because Gary is terrified of Guru. I'm not sure what has suddenly brought on the behavior. There is no jowl popping, just attempted matings.

I would build a 3rd enclosure but the landlord is already uneasy about me having 3 "giant" lizards and 2 "giant" enclosures. I'll ask him but I'm 99.99999999% sure its a no-go. I should have been more responsible about it and tried to find another solution when I noticed it but I really love these guys.

I haven't decided who I want to re-home, I was kind of just going to let someone choose for themselves and figure it out from there. It bums me out, when I got them I wasn't planning on keeping all 3 but they grew on me lol. They've really come a long way.

Anyone have anything else I can try doing or do I need to make the final step and find one a new home? I know its not fair to Rango, poor little guy. I know hes male, I've seen his hemipenis and he leaves me sperm plugs every day.

 

[Kebechet]

Oh man, I'm sorry Alexi :/ I wish I had some advice. Have you talked to the guys at House of Reptiles? Maybe they have some ideas too.

 

[reptastic]

How big is the current enclosure, would it be possible to section it off Even if it's temporary, i think its a dominant issue, when i picked up my male b/w gozar the people i got him from had another male and they had them both free roaming, i noticed the other male trying to mount gozar twice but he was jowl popping too, gozar was stressed out and repeatedly tried to hide til they got seperated, its possible it will pass, but probably not til after hibernation(if they go down)

 

[Rhetoric]

its 8x5x4. its got lights on both sides, i only use them one side atm. its weird rango is the one being mounted by both of the others. hes bigger than gary too

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only time i see it is in the ebclosure, theure both fine with rango outside of it

 

[Dirtydmc]

From what I've researched, male lizards in general don't get along after they hit adulthood. Females seem to do just fine. And male, female mix's do good too. Id get another enclosure. But its your call. A breeder would know better on this topic.


My landlord was told that we had a dog. Now we have many animals and more coming. Never asked if it was cool. I'll move before I get rid of my hoard. .

 

[reptastic]

Generally speaking with tegus males usually get along fine, i think its during puberty and adolesence when you may experience the problems, its possible you have 2 dominant males and 1 submissive, which could explain the mounting, also the enclosure is their territory and they are letting rango know it, when outside they have no territory

 

[Rhetoric]

Lol we moved a couple months ago because the place we lived at for 2 years finaly found out about our pits. They told us to get rid of the dogs so we moved out.
Ill ask him, it never hurts. I'm just not getting my hopes up about it. He's over a lot because they're working on a draining issue the neighbor has in their back yard. Worst case I can't keep all 3 and if that happens ill be posting something on here. I tried posting on craigslist a week or so ago but imo the interested parties were too sketch. One of the respondees was a pet store offering $75 for one of the tegus... Ha not going to a petstore!
Ill try blocking off a portion. I thought new decorations and substrate might give it a fresh feel but nope lol. I just don't want any of the tegus to suffer.

Ill call around too kebechet and see if anyone has any other ideas.

 

[herpgirl2510]

This happened to me between the red I had and Tonka. I was told that they really needed to be seperated or Tonka was going to get hurt. My red was so territorial that he would go up to all the eclosures and harrass the other lizards. I did not fee it would be fair to keep Bogart in his enclosure all the time and I wasnot willing to risk something happening to my other lizards. I can empathize with how you feel it may or may not pass I guess it depends on how serious the behavior is. My red was really biting at Tonka's nek and tail and Tonka was terrifed of him.

 

[Draco D Tegu]

Rhetoric.....can you do what I did, and build a double decker enclosure out of one of them? I built a 7.5ft tall enclosure, divided it into two, and the top half houses my iggy, the bottom half houses my Tegus. Technically it's ONE enclosure. So this way you would still only have two enclosures

 

[chelvis]

I used a puppy/childs gate in one of my enclosures to keep Bosco and Rio apart. I had the same issue with the landlord, so i divided the cage and just made sure when i got home every evening there was lots of free roaming time. I pup burlap on the gate to pervent any rubbing on the plastic parts.

The out coming was kind of mixed: Bosco did not care at all, infact he did not even noticed Rio who is three years younger. Rio though would always try and get at Bosco.

 

[Rhetoric]

I thought about stacking enclosures but there is no room since the 8x5 is already on top of gurus enclosure lol.

Chelvis are they still split that way? I want to try splitting them for a bit to see if they might mellow out, maybe its a hormone surge. But I don't want to cause behavioral problems if they feel too crammed. They'd either get a 4x5 or 8x2.5 lol.

 

[Rhetoric]

It looks like Gary will need a new home. Poor rango has been picked on and mounted almost non-stop. I am not able to build a 3rd enclosure and I don't feel comfortable splitting their 8x5 in half, at their size, I feel it will cause more harm than good even if its only temporarily. I think they both deserve better. I really wasn't planning on keeping all 3 when I took Gary and Rango in but I wasn't sure how long it would take to get them "healthy".

I haven't gotten gary to the vet, he seems completely fine since the weird mouth thing. If someone was seriously interested in him I'd be willing to get him a check up to help put their mind at ease if they want.
The reason I'm thinking Gary is because Rango is the one I seem to have bonded with the most out of the 3. I guess I'd consider selling Guru, if there is no interest in Gary. But we'll get to that later if need be.

I'll probably post something in the f/s section here in a few days. If anyone is interested before then feel free to PM me. If there is no interest here I might post him on CL, which I hate hate hate thinking about. I don't want to post him on fauna, I'd rather he either goes to a member on here or to someone I can meet in person if from CL.

Gary would do best with someone who has experience with tegus. He's not "mean", hes just a little more flighty. I work with him a lot but it seems to be a slow process. For some reason every now and then he is just sort of jumpy and nervous. He's always been this way, I'm not sure how often he was handled as a juvie. At this point in time, hes more of an explorer than a lap lizard. He'll tolerate being picked up to be moved from point A to point B. He doesn't mind being touched/pet. Who knows, with more work he could become more mellow. He's got a pretty dominant personality with Rango but he hides from Guru so I'm not sure how he would do with others. He's 2 years old and around 3 ft. He's probably about 5lbs, exact weight and measurement will be posted in the F/S section with new pictures/videos.

[attachment=2852]
^ July 19
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^July 19
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^ June 21

 

[Kebechet]

Awww I'd take him if I was able to, but I have no idea how he'd get along with Link, and a 8x3x3 would likely be too small for two tegus. Depending on what you want to do, you might also talk to House of Reptiles and see if anyone there would take him.

 

[Rhetoric]

I thought about checking with them. I know they've got the black throat and the store tegu. I'm not sure if it was Gary or Rango but one of these two tegus came from House of Reptiles, I think it was Rango.. All heps pets was interested in him but nooooo thanks.

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lol @ the pics I posted, the bottom 2 are from last week and the top one was from about a month ago

 

[babyyitslove]

From what I've researched, male lizards in general don't get along after they hit adulthood. Females seem to do just fine. And male, female mix's do good too. Id get another enclosure. But its your call. A breeder would know better on this topic.


My landlord was told that we had a dog. Now we have many animals and more coming. Never asked if it was cool. I'll move before I get rid of my hoard. .

We got lucky and got to move into a home that was willed to us. Before, we only had 3 dogs, 2 cats, and two crested geckos. When we moved in here, we remodeled a lot of the house and mounted shelving from top to bottom of the walls in our reptile room.... never told anyone why. Two months later, we went from 2 crested geckos to 21 reptiles. Yeah. Thank goodness we own this place.