Uromastyx.org

Hi everyone,

My names Martin, I'm from the UK, and I joined the forum a few months ago but haven't got round to posting anything until now, I have 6 Chuckwallas which are great, and also about five weeks ago I purchased an Egyptian Uromastyx from a classified adds site called pre-loved. I'm told he is captive bred, he's about two years old and about 16" long, he's sort of semi tame as he had never tried to bite his previous owners I'm told but does whip his tail a bit. After getting him I let him settle in for a couple of weeks and then started letting him out so he could get used to me however this didn't seem to be going too well, so I decided to work with him in his viv first. The problem was that every time you opened the viv door he would whip his tail whether he was in his hide or out and you didn't even have to go near him to trigger this behaviour. Any way I came up with a strategy to try and correct this behaviour and applied the technique (you can see a post on king snake uro forum called my Egyptian uro taming diary details exactly what I did) I carried it out intensively for a week with fantastic results, as he pretty much stopped tail whipping in the viv altogether. However a couple of days ago I moved him in to his new 5' x 3' x 2' enclosure and we're pretty much back to square one due to him being a bit stressed about moving in to a new enclosure, so I'm going to give him a week or two to settle in again before I start working with him. Also before he was moved in to his new enclosure I would stroke his head and chin and back whilst in his viv which he seemed to like, but as I mentioned were pretty much back to square one so I will have to work on that again too. His husbandry has improved a heck of a lot I'd say compared to his old set up, when I got him he came with a 4' x 19” viv, and they used one of those exo terra compact florescent bulbs and judging by how far away the light fixture was from the bottom of the viv I don't see how he can have been getting enough UVB, any way I got him a zoo med power sun MVB bulb which is a million times better for him and then there is a florescent light tube for supplemental lighting and then a ceramic heater for night time. So I think I've improved the husbandry substantially, so when he has settled in properly to his new enclosure because of the correct husbandry I should be able to see his true behaviour and not stress induced behaviour, so I won't be thinking well is he doing this because of environmental stress and hopefully I'll be able to get him calmed down to where I want him. I'd like to just get to the point where he doesn't tail whip when approached when outside the viv because apart from that he's pretty good so it will be great to get rid of that behaviour so we can be comfortable with each other. So any way I'd really like to hear your experiences with your Egyptian Uro's? Did you have similar problems with yours? If so how did you calm them down and what are they like now? Also what do you think to what I've said about my Egyptian? And what do you think to his enclosure? By the way his temperatures are 80f on the cool side 87- 90 on the warm side and 115f basking temp, so I think they are pretty good temps, I know you can go higher on the basking temp as I have read 110 – 120 and even 120 – 140 on some care sheets. Any way sorry for rambling on a bit, I look forward to hearing about your Egyptian Uro experiences. By the way the picture of his old enclosure is a picture his previous owners e-mailed me, so that is how he was set up.

Thanks for reading
Martin

Hello. I was holding off replying to your message because I thought someone with more experience would chime in. I am relatively new to Uromastyx keeping. I have a yearling Egyptian Uro that I have kept a bit over 2 months now. My enclosure is a similar size to yours. It's a 60"L X 31"D X 24"H. My temps are 93F to 98F hot side during the day and 85F to 90F cool side. The night temps are 80F hot side and 73F to 78F cool side. The basking area is 129F @ 95F ambient air temp. I use 2 - 18" X 14" slabs of flagstone as part of the basking area. I find my Uro will return to the basking area several times each day. Especially after he has been digging in the playsand on the cool side. I think is is good to provide a big surface area for the basking site as the Uro can choose to lay in the hottest spot or back away a bit to a slightly cooler area. It seems my little guy knows exactly what he needs for heat at any given time. Since I have a very young Uro, he does not display any aggression what so ever. I can clean his enclosure and change feeding dishes with no problems. He will run away into his hide if I make a sudden movement near him, however he has come over to me to be hand fed. Also he frequently comes over to the plexi door to watch the computer with me. I do not take my Uro out of his cage however. I would rather consider him a display animal and I do not wish to upset him any. I have seen many films on YouTube where keepers interact many ways with their Uros. That's fine with me but I prefer the hands off type of keeping. The only thing I might suggest is to give your Uro plenty of time to settle into his new home. You have to remember he is probably a bit frightened at this point and needs time to see where everything is and where the quickest routes to safety are. Also you might want to increase his basking temperature just to make sure he has enough heat for good digestion. An infrared temperature gun is a must in order to accurately read the surface temps of your basking area. Well that's my 2 cents worth. If you want to discuss more points, you can send me a private message.

Hi,
At last a reply!!! lol. Thanks for your input, even though like me you are new to uromastyx it's nice to here your thoughts as that is what I'm after just to compare, and the main thing is I want to get a feel for what other peoples Egyptians are like personality/ temperament wise. Sounds like your is really nice, I wish mine was like that, he does seem to have settled down a bit now and the past 2 or 3 days he hasn't whipped his tail when I've put food in cleaned poo up etc. His basking spot has risen to 130 f now, the thing is I measured it just a few hours after putting the reflector in to heat it up and it looks like it hadn't finished warming the area up. Frank seems to like the larger basking area and he uses the entire warm end as I've seen him right under the light, at the back and at the front just beyond the beam, and earlier I saw him sitting at the cool end for a bit. Mines the same as yours with digging too, I'm using a clay and sand mix for substrate that makes and excavator clay type substrate (if you want to no more about it just let me know, I just don't want this post to be too long lol) and the other day he made me laugh as he would go dig his burrow out at the cool end for 5 mins and then he'd come and bask for about 5 mins and he kept doing this over and over for an hour or two, it just reminded me of people taking a break and getting back to work, he's like me cos I'd need a break every 5 mins if I dug as much as he does lol. I guess it's good that you want to keep your Egyptian as a display lizard, but if I were you I would take advantage of the fact that he doesn't lash out at you with his tail or anything as if he is leaning more towards being friendly then that’s a huge bonus to you, I wish I could have started with a younger one but they don't come up for sale very often over here, and I got him and his set up for only £100.00 plus £20.00 for fuel so I jumped at the chance. I wish we could swap as mine would be a good look but don't touch lizard and yours would make a good pet lol. The thing is with frank it's like he has two personalities because before moving him in to his new viv, I got to the point where he wouldn't tail whip when I needed to do anything in his viv and I knew from what his previous owners said that he liked his head and chin being scratched and I got to the point where I was stroking his head and chin and so on quite a bit whilst in the viv and he loved it and I did too as it felt like we were bonding, so if we could be like that most of the time at least minus the tail whipping that would be great as the tail whipping doesn't seem to match the rest of his personality. I'm letting him settle in for perhaps another week and then I'm going to start working with him to try and stop the tail whipping. The thing I've noticed is that when he has tail whipped before it seems to be on my hands approach towards him, so to get him used to it I've come up with an idea, I'm going to stuff a gardening glove with tissue paper and then some how make an arm type thing for it, and then I'm going to use that to approach him multiple times a day in his viv and then when he settles down I'll stroke him with it and then when he is fairly relaxed I'll back off. I know you might think that sounds stupid but I don't know how big yours is at 1 year old but mines about 2 years old and 16” long and to be honest he can be quite intimidating, I know a lot of people might think I'm being a big girl (to be honest they might have a point lol) but I've read quite a few thing lately about people being slapped on the hand and it bleeding, I've also read about smaller uromastyx bites being like a pare of pliers on your finger so I'd rather play on the safe side until I'm plenty sure he won't do either. The thing is the other day he showed a different aggression that I haven’t seen in him before as I was putting the food bowl in and I moved it towards him to show him what was in it and he rose up on all fours, flattened his body , tilted it towards me and hissed a bit, so until I fully access what he's capable of I think he's a bit of a ticking bomb waiting to explode every now and then. I'm determined to get him to where I want him though as I've seen his nice side and he has responded well to training/ taming I did to stop him tail whipping in his viv so I'll just have to go for it and see how I get on. I'm really interested in any story’s anyone has about there Egyptians though, about their temperament and any behavioural issues you might have had and how you get around them. So much for keeping this one shorter lol, but it's nice to talk to some one about there Egyptian so thanks for your reply.
Martin

Hi. Mart20 I sent you a private message. Check your inbox.