Eight of my twenty Ptyas dhumnades are now feeding on pink mice. I no longer have frogs as the ponds are now frozen as we are also having an ice storm. They are hard to switch to pinks but my hunch is that like most things they have a dual life stage. A dual life stage is necessary if you think about it. Size alone dictates what can be eaten but my hunch is that the young hang out along permanent water until they get some size to them.
Like my other racers, coachwhips, cribos and the like once feeding on pinks anything goes. I have found that they will not digest food properly anything under 83F and temps under 74 will kill them.
After working with these challenging snakes I was re-thinking Boiga. I have always had poor luck with them but I kept them like all my other colubrids 84F ish.
Ptyas like Boiga are from the hot tropics and like it hot. My hunch is most if not all keepers of Boiga have no luck because they are kept too cool. If they were kept at 88F and young were given the food they crave frogs I think they would start like Ptyas. My Ptyas are kept 86F to 90F.
My method was this; I scented cricket frogs with pink mouse parts for them and all 20 ate every time frogs were offered. None accepted scented pinks for the first month as they keyed on movement. The next step was to feed as much as possible (every two days at 88F) then after a month two ate scented pink mice (scented with cricket frog) the rest were fasted for 10 day stretches and offered only scented mice after about a month fast six more accepted scented mice, the rest will most likely perish. My goal is to have 2.2 breeders and I am off to a good start.
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