Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is a general warning about some egg eating snakes - D. medici.

A lot of E. African Dasypeltis have suddenly come up for sale recently, both on KS and at shows. Most Dasypeltis species will take quail eggs, but not Dasypeltis medici, which, for reference, is shown in this ad on the left:

http://market.kingsnake.com/detail.php?cat=6&de=411904

They're pretty snakes (slender, light brick red with a darker vertebral stripe and bars down the sides with small white spots along the vertebral stripe), and really cool, but you need to be prepared to find eggs of finches or other passerine birds, small parrots, or pigeons/doves to feed them, no matter what the seller says. A lot of sellers at shows or on KS classifieds will say they take quail eggs, but experienced keepers report that they do not, and they appear to be physically incapable of eating quail eggs.

Quail eggs have relatively thick shells. Egg eating snakes crack open eggs with extensions of their vertebrae, and for some reason, D. medici has relatively short extensions and cannot open eggs with thicker shells.

I bought a pair of D. medici, found them rejecting quail eggs, did the reasearch, and now they're doing well on cockatiel, love bird, and finch eggs, but it does take some work to find the eggs.

Good luck,

Billy

I'm not interested in them, but maybe you will prevent someone else from making an uniformed decision.
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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

I'm a little embarrassed about buying the snakes without doing the proper research ahead of time, but I might as well save someone else the same mistake.

Anyhow, the seller to whose ad I had referred pulled the ad to change the reference to quail eggs - this is certainly to his credit. I think a lot of sellers aren't lying so much as assuming that the D. medici will be like D. scabra, D. inornata, and D. atra, all of which are much more commonly imported.

I've posted two Dasypeltis pictures so you can see what they look like. The one on the top is the D. medici. The one on the bottom is a D. scabra. D. scabra vary a lot in pattern, but most of them (some are solid colored) have a lot more blotching and spotting than the D. medici and have a slightly thicker build.

Cheers,
Billy

Phillyherping