You can expect to pay around 100 ---if you want I can get a current price list because it's been a while. I know you can save around 20 (so it would be I *think* about 110 or 120 for a hatchling)for waiting the extra year and the animal would have been hibernating most of that time anyway---so it's not like they are all that much older. Remember their system shuts down in brumation---they do not grow. Like I said if you want me to get exact numbers I will. I really don't remember to be honest but that is the ballpark. I know Bert was always a little less expensive then Ron, and if you email him he will send you a current pricelist.
The prices go down in the fall but do yourself a favor and do not buy one then----the best time to buy one is now. They are awake and will stay awake until the fall. You really do not want a sleeping tegu coming in the mail. I went through it and it's no fun.
As far as food they eat everything from chicken gizzards to pork chops to turkey---practically any meat as adults. Whole prey are rodents and birds like chickens and quail. They love sweet potatoes and greens---berrys too. They will eat practically anything.
As babies, they eat crickets, supers and pinkies. Mine stopped eating insects fairly quickly though.
Basic size stuff---as they grow so does their prey.
Spring and summer they eat more. Mine will eat alot every other day and a little every day. In the colder months they will eat a little every other day.
They will brumate if anything at all triggers it even briefly until they are well established with you.
They are very easy to train. I just got some very cool dog halters for mine with stars and stripes leashes
Humidity is not an issue of you provide them with moist burrowing material. Basking is an issue though.
Alot of people will not let the animal bask enough under some good lights or outside---and the end results are tremors and syptoms leading to MBD or problems associated with it. People tend to forget they are lizards that require UVB--perhaps because they act so much like cats
They are not shy and will basically look at your house like it's theirs LOL
They are wonderful pets----they really are pets and not specimens. And they are great wiith children
For a first tegu I always say the same thing: Get a chacoan male. No egg retention problems ---larger animal (usually a rule but mine is actually a bit smaller then the female). But as a pair one of each is nice.
When a tegu gets scared or intimidated, the will shakes their tails exactly like a rattler.....and then they will hiss---then they will try to appear larger to frighten you....they almost stand on their toes and take a stance the way a monitor might.
All this is precusor to getting bit. I have never been bit. No one in my house has been bit and my tegus roam about all the time.
They are really nice animals.
