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My pair of WC ornates are doing fine and eating, gaining weight, and being very outgoing, personable lizards.
I do have one tint problem, one that is hure to get a few snickers...lol
When I had bearded dragons, they had an enclosure with two basking platforms and a bottom section that contained bedding and would act as the toilet. I kept them of stone tiles and uses Carefresh as the substrate. The intention was that the lizards would not want to soil the basking/living area and would defecate in the lower portion of the cage. Perhaps, just to frustrate me, they never did. I seemed greatly pleasing for them to dump on the basking tiles, smear through it, then have it dry under the basking lights, so that I could spend as much times as possible spot cleaning and scrubbing soiled lizard funiture. They ecspecially relished a freshly cleaned cage, where , in spite of being soaked and bathed, they would deposit stool immediatley on the newly cleaned surfaces. it drove me nuts!!!
Now, the ornates do the same thing. I was wondering what, if anything, would encourage them to defecate in designated areas and not where the bask or in the food dish, where they walk through it and potentially ingest it. The only thing I curretnly have considered, is placing the feces in the designated spot as a cue and hope they develop a pattern of defecating only where there is laready feces present. I think it is a myth that reptiles are like cats and dogs in that they won't soil thier living areas. In nature, obviously they aren't forced to live in close contact with thier excrement, but I'm sure they soil and tread through thier own muck in thier territories, b/c there is not a lot of rain in the desert to wash it away.
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