uromastix

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Uromastyx acanthinurus

Moroccon dabb lizard

I visited Morocco especially to bring these colorfull lizards back.

Morocco does not normally export wildlife, but the Uromastyx available in the trade were all not suitable for me, as they are all from regions with less cold winters. These Dabb lizards from Morocco I can keep outdoors in unheated, but very well designed terraria, which most of all should remain dry enough.

The fact that they do not need heating in winter allows me to keep very many without increasing keepingcosts. I grow various plants for them here myself, such as dandelion, clover, cichory, plantain, mulberry-tree, hibiscus and figs, so that feeding them is also without costs. Additional leaves I get as trimmings from nearby supermarkets. A small amount of their food is deadheadroaches and superworms that I also breed myself.

We have many bloodlines and about 70 animals now, but with this year's offspring we will get over 100 animals. We have mainly green and red ones, but also a few yellow and greybrown ones. The color has nothing to do with the sex, males can be red or green etc, females too. Young animals are all greyish.

We are still increasing our colony and do not sell any yet. Our animals are for the main part still young and subadults as a result of our breeding programm.

In nature these lizards live in the HAMADA, which is arabic for stone-desert. A hamada consist mostly of fine grained soil, almost clayish and on top and inside this soils are rocks and stones of all sizes. These rocks create numerous moist microhabitats, as they save the moisture of the rare rains underneath them and also they concentrate water on one side of the rock, where then plants have a better chance to survive. The Dabbs mostly start their burrow under such a large rock, a burrow which can be several meters long. Inside it has always a certain moisture and even at the hottest weather it will be below 90F deep enough in it. They spend 80% of their life in these burrows (hibernation, night, hot part of the day).

A terrarium must have a place with a certain moisture for them to hide, but not wet. Otherwise shedding problems will come and toes will fall off. In my outdoorterraria they can make their burrows themselves. We use earth and no sand, as in sand the burrows would collapse.

Breeding takes place in May and eggs are laid in June-July. Babies hatch in September. Eggs need very special care in order to hatch good babies. They may not dry out, but may also not get too moist.

In their habitat just south of the Atlas mountains there are 3 months with nightfrost possibilities. Most rain falls in the winter-spring and the animals have most food in the springtime, when also flowers are blooming. In the summertime they mostly have to do it with feces of camels, seeds and dry leaves. To save water in that season they can get rid of urin-acids by the nostrils, which is visible as white coating around the nostrils. In terraria this may not happen, when they get moist plants offered all year, which is not natural for the animals, however.

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