Ridged tailed monitors

[Sami-Lochy]

Hey I was just about to buy a 3 yr old male to join my trio, of monitors. The reason being I have 2 female, one of them being quite large(40cm) who is about 2 yrs old and one small male, who is very timid, and is only 29cm. He is to timid to mate with the other females as the females bully him and the larger female will try bite him on the neck or on the feet when she gets the chance.
I try stop the female biting the male, whenever I see commotion going down but sometimes I'm not quick enough and she bites him. Then I tap the female on the head and put her in what we call 'the naughty box' which is a small container with a tiny bit of dirt. This doesn't seem to deter the big female and she goes after the male at least 5/6 times a day including her 4/5 hours a day she spends in the naughty box.

I recently got this big female and male lizards so unfortunately I do not know the history of the pair. I really looked forward to having the male mate with both females but the male is too tentative and I don't think he will engage with mating them. Any thoughts or tips on how I can get the lizards to get along together?
i hope getting this male will fix these problems and put the female in her place. What do you guys think?
and another important question.. What age can ackies breed up to? Is 3 years too old??
cheers so much

 

[MonitorMayhem]

Are you sure you're big female is not a male only a thought you should be able to tell by the spurs easy and 3 years is not to old just perfect actually hope all works out well ackies can be funny sometimes

 

[Sami-Lochy]

100% sure its a female, the big female and the male had babies once before, so maybe because the previous owner didnt keep any of the babies, maybe the female thinks the male ate the babies?

 

[gold&black...]

keep him separate for a while and feed him well. When he get's some size on him, reintroduce him to the female's cage...

 

[Robo1]

Agree with gold&black, separate and get the male feeding and behaving normally. The female may also be unresponsive and aggressive as it's out of season.

 

[mike72]

On many occasions I have observed dominant females acting in that exact way. As others have said you need to seperate them otherwise she may do some serious damage to him. You could try getting a larger male to put with the dominant female and keep the smaller male in a seperate inclosure with the smaller female, that way you would effectively have two pairs increasing you chance of breeding. Once the small male puts on size you can swap the males between the females to keep them interested.

 

[Sami-Lochy]

cheers guys for your advice, I will separate the female and the male, and let you know how it goes.