Feeding – What Not to Do
Despite concrete field research outlining the diet and types of prey items the Savannah Monitor consumes, one can still look and find horrific ideas as to what this monitor should eat in captivity. Let’s look at a few.
Dog/Cat Food
Somehow, somewhere, an idea began that it was okay to feed a monitor canned dog or cat food and other unsuitable food items meant for other types of pets. While these food options have protein, they often contain the parts of the cow or feeder animal that is cast off after the human cuts of meat make it to the grocery store. It’s not uncommon to hear of brains, chicken beaks and feet, entrails, and rotten grain 1 making its way into dog and cat food. Additionally, the canned options are so loaded with fat that we’re frankly not sure they are even safe for dogs and cats. Feeding these foods to your monitor cannot be discouraged strongly enough.
Human Food
It is also uncertain where the idea originated, but at some point a feeding regimen began for Savannah Monitors that included food meant for humans. Everything from beef livers and hearts, processed meat from the grocery store, lunch meat, and other equally unsuitable food items were deemed acceptable to provide nutrition to this invertebrate feeder. It is likely that due to the mistaken notion that the Savannah Monitor feeds on carrion, which it does not, that items like these were introduced into the captive monitor’s diet. While nutritionally complete for a human, items like processed grocery store meat are not a complete nutritional whole prey item for a monitor.
Commercial Monitor Diet
Companies now seem to be selling “Commercial Monitor Diet”, a canned supplement to feeding whole prey items. These canned diets tend to be nothing more than someone’s variation on the SDZ Diet mentioned in the next section, packaged to make money. While the intention to provide nutritionally complete monitor food should be acknowledged as good, we again find it difficult to support variations on Jeff Lemm’s proven recipe for supplemental monitor food as variations have been long known to fail. There have also been canned diets rumored to contain ground up rodent feeders which again begs the question as to what your monitor is actually eating.