10 lbs of chewed bubble gum

[CrankbaitJedi]

So the experiment of keeping my B&W female and male Blue together in the same enclosure is over. His love for her just kept boiling over. His constant attempts at breeding her was just too much. At first it wasn't that big of deal but as he got more persistant, it was just too painful to see her looking worse and worse. Her tail, her back, her face... oh her poor cheeks!!! Now when I look at her I sing a little Elvis inspired ditty... She's All Chewed Up, A huh, yeah yeah... yeah!
So I moved him out and he is now in a smaller trough enclosure vs her mansion. She is feeling a lot better about things but man, she is going to be scarred up. Poor female gus, they go thru this every time they breed??? Yowsers. She is starting to shed now so I will see what kind of perma damage has been done.

 

[Piercedcub32]

Just curious and not judging, but why would you wait so long? is there some sort of period where they establish dominance?

 

[CrankbaitJedi]

Good question. I was watching... and until he broke the skin on the cheeks it just seemed like tegus being tegus. She is quite a bit bigger than he is and she mostly just ignored him. I am sure there is some acclimation time to be accounted for and establishing an 'order' of things but I really wasn't concerned about all that. When you house more than one animal (especially male/female) you get to see some really cool behaviors that you just don't get to see in a single gu environment. Heck, after moving the Blue outta the cage... I let my juvi savannah go hang out in the big cage and now I am seeing a bunch of different behaviors again. Truly fascinating. I don't think the Blue was doing anything really 'bad', he was just making my pretty girl... not so pretty. Right now, the Sav (15 inches long) and my Girly Gu (40+ inches) are in the same hole chillin' like villains. All the while, the Blue is trying to find out what happened to his Boogie.