Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[Scott W]

Anyone got any good photos or tips for out door vivs? I'm looking at a colony of Eyed lizards or perhaps something else?

[Jas]

Now this is something i am REALLY interested in.
Ive not actually tried it myself yet but have a few ideas that i will eventually put into practice, as i said in introductions im just getting back into the hobby and this year will be building a large reptile room with some outdoor enclosures at the bottom of my garden.
I would only keep ground dwelling species outdoors though.
Ive thought of having south facing enclosures with a solid wall all the way round to act as a wind breaker (and obviously keeping them in with a lip on it to stop them climbing out)just keeping the wind out would raise temperature slightly.Then inside the enclosure have the ground sloping slightly facing south to absorb more heat.I would also plant various shrubs inside that flower various times of the year to attract insects to help vary the lizards diet and for shade(i know people say dont feed wild insects because of insecticides but if this was the case everywhere we would have no wildlife).For the lizards to hide under i would maybe use black binbags filled with grass cuttings(you felt how hot these get when the grass starts to compose just after a day!)or maybe the slabs of brick you get in storage heaters which are made up of a substance designed to absorb and store heat.Drainage would have to be looked at but wouldnt be too much of a problem with the sloping base and maybe a strong mesh top if you got cats around your area or fox's.I would LOVE to see more posts on this subject and talk more on it.
Jas

[Scott W]

you got some good ideas there, and if I had the space I'm sure I would have quite a few outdoor vivs.

Have you seen the book about designing outdoor vivs? It's in german, I hoping and waiting that it will be published in english.

Bert Langerwerf has some great outdoor cages, look at AgamaInternational website, he's even had 4ft of snow on top without losing any animals.

[Scott W]

heres the link http://www.agamainternational.com/gallery_terraria/


and a photo of part of there set up

[Jas]

Yeah i did email him about this a few months ago and he suggested 3 or 4 species that would do ok,but since my pc crashed a few weeks back i no longer have any of my old emails, and so cant remember what they all were, one was the grozny lacerta tho.