Tuesday, December 27, 2011

- Feeding Day

Mice, rats, chicks, geckos, ASFs, guinea pigs, snails, mice tails, and quail - it's quite an exhaustive process to feed the collection of snakes I have. It'd be so much easier to only care for one species of snake that eats only one type of food, but then what kind of collection would that be?!

My JCP will take any type of prey at times (large rats, guinea pigs, quail), and then go off feed and only accept adult mice (this is small for a 1700+ gram snake) once a month. All of my ball pythons are on to mice or rats, except for one that refuses to eat anything but the hard to find African Soft-furred rats. Now my Leptodiera and Oxyrhopus will eat scented pinks, but I stick with the natural items, so they get feeder geckos delivered from LLLReptile every few weeks. There's even one Solomon Islands tree boa (SITB) that only eats geckos, unless it's really reared up and mistakes an offered pinky for food. The Sibon only eat snails... a real pain to find in a place where winter causes everything to go into hibernation. A couple ball pythons get picky every so often and only want chicks or quail. Lastly, the baby haitian boas are very picky and are still being assist fed mice tails. Good thing I'm patient and they're comfortable with me.

The saving graces are my Adult Haitian boas, my DCI python, and my Het VPI Snow male BP. These consistently eat large rats! I love them! They eat like clockwork, only need one meal, and are gaining a lot of weight.

The great thing about feeding day is that everyone is getting bigger and healthier (I don't overfeed), and it's another week before I need to feed them all again.

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