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Posted by jfmoore on February 24, 2003 at 00:46:00:
In Reply to: worried about baby Kenyans posted by meretseger on February 19, 2003 at 17:26:34:
If you’re dealing with eight-gram sand boas, you probably won’t have success trying to assist feed whole pinkies, but you can quite easily use a mouse tail or half of a mouse tail per snake. In case you’re not familiar with the technique – hold the snake in one hand and roll downwards with your thumb against the side of its mouth and insert the cut end of the tail into the front of its mouth and back towards its throat. Put the snake down. Instinct should take over and the snake will swallow the tail on its own. I certainly wouldn’t screw around for too long before you attempt to force some nutrition on these baby snakes. But since you appear to have a gram scale you can easily keep track of their mass.
Of course, a rodent tail is no substitute for a whole animal, but it will definitely tide a recalcitrant snake over while you work to get it feeding voluntarily. I’ve gone through weird times where all the offspring of a particular male and female would feed readily from the start, and then the next litter from the same parents would have a large percentage which tried my patience getting them started. So, I’ve used the mouse tail method a number of times. Also, I always feed baby Kenyan sand boas in deli cups, leaving them for up to twenty-four hours (but usually just over night) with the pinkies, whether live or thawed.
Good luck.
:I've got 3 baby Kenyans that had a bit of a tough time when they were shipped to me- they almost froze. They're acting fine now, but they haven't eaten for me yet. I've tried live pinkies twice. The snakes only weigh 8 grams. How long should I wait until I try forcing them, and what would be the best method to do this?
