Posted by:
Maryann
at Sat Nov 22 15:39:19 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Maryann ]
The first thing I want to ask is "how old are they?" Some people want to feed babies right after they've been born, and sometimes they won't eat for a couple weeks to a month, due to still having full bellies from yolk sacs, etc. And...have they shed yet? Newborns always shed either right after they're born, or within a weekor so.
If this has all happened, then our success (with other small stuff, i.e. slender hognose vipers) has been to tap them on the tail with a newborn pinky to make them, "mad" and they'll strike. Hopefully, they'll hold on and then you just back away and wait very quietly for some swallowing action to take place. This can also work with frozen-thawed pinks. Of course we're doing all this using long tweezers.
Frogs would have been my original answer, but tiny frogs are not always easy to get ahold of, and we've been fairly successful with the pinky-tapping method. On smaller babies (i.e. eyelash vipers) we'll tap with "pinky parts" till they bite and grab. Overall our success rate's been pretty good.
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RE: feeding baby Malayan Pit Vipers - Maryann, Sat Nov 22 15:39:19 2003