Posted by:
serpentcity
at Sat May 17 00:48:02 2003 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by serpentcity ]
...Exactly as I was saying. Long hemostats are the bomb! The 3-prong gripper deal is better than nothing, but the prongs tend to bite through the skin and the rat gets hung-up on it. Better to order some mail-order. Try LLLReptile, they seem to have good prices.
Dave, the females certianly sound like they're behaving like recently imported females that laid prior to their importation, with them being that jumpy. U.S. breeders get eggs almost every month of the year (95% are between Feb-Sept) but in Africa the females' laying is more clumped around Feb-March so it could easily jive with your source's story, but not the CB part.
Your temps are perfect, a temp gradiet between about 80 to low 90's is good. You're going through a lot of trouble raising gerbils for these females, but more power to you. Fresh-killed laid in front of their hide-boxes (hide boxes, a MUST!) at night
is your best bet, but asking you to fresh kill yourself is a big order. Basically you take the food item by the tail and whack it firmly against something hard, like the edge of a table. Sooner-come-later if your collection grows you GOTS to learn this! So anyways, these females are difficult to acclimate to captivity and I strongly urge you to obtain a nice feeding baby BP to balance-out the frustration you'll experience with the adults.
Scott J. Michaels DVM
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RE: Need Help- Feeding Nerves - serpentcity, Sat May 17 00:48:02 2003