Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Sorry, no pics, just questions:

Are these regularly somewhat difficult to get started as babies, or is it just that sometimes, they can be? What are possible causes for reluctant eaters, and what methods have you personally used with success to get them to eat?

Where do these kings come from? What states?

Thanks in advance!

~jenny
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"Polysyllabism in no way insures that what you're saying is actually worth being heard." - Blake (an e-friend of mine)

"I have never made but one prayer to god, a very short one: "O lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And he granted it." - Voltaire

Jenny,
Thayeri can be challenging as hatchlings much like alterna. There are several tricks you can try to get your thayeri going:

Offer a live pink that has been poked in the head with a needle to get some of the brain juices flowing (braine pinks)

Offer f/t pink in similar manner just mentioned

Offer live pink in a small brown paper bag.

Offer pink in deli cup and put the cup in a dark place while eating.

This last one I've found to work pretty good too. Make a depression in the aspen and set the pink in the depression. Set the waterbowl over the depression so it covers it but leave just enough of a space so the thayeri can crawl under it and eat the pink. This mimics nature the best.

Last thing if your thayeri is not eating....hibernate it.

Thayeri are not found in the US. They are found in Mexico (Nuevo Leon).

Good luck. Next time you buy thayeri, better to spend more money and get an established eater than to get a deal.

Russ

Thanks for the tips! I'll try braining next time.

They're not mine, we got some in at the store I work for and the usual tricks I try with babies aren't working. Haven't tried braining yet though, so I'll give that a shot.

And thanks for letting me know where they're from - that helps too.

~jenny
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"Polysyllabism in no way insures that what you're saying is actually worth being heard." - Blake (an e-friend of mine)

"I have never made but one prayer to god, a very short one: "O lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And he granted it." - Voltaire

The way I read this post is, the keeper must already have very good husbandry.

In my opinion, over many decades working with these kind of snakes. If they are picky, its ALL about the conditions they are kept in. If they are picky, the conditions are poor.

The very first thing a keeper should do is check their husbandry and make sure you're offering what the snake needs(temp choices, humidity choices and security) Normally this will allow 99.99% to feed properly.

In the old days I would wonder why people would resort to tricking a snake to feed, when in my field experience you cannot stop them from feeding. They will naturally feed on anything and everything thats within their prey type and may I add anywhere. This type of feeding responce is what should be expected and used as "normal".

We all know if we dry out adults or get them to hot or to cold, they become picky then stop feeding. Don't we all know that? So why do we resort to trickery with juvi's?

In most cases, small individuals are dehydrated(high surface to mass ratio) therefore, they need more humidity(less air movement) then larger individuals. Of course, temps have to be right. Small snakes also fear everything and rightfully so. So they need to hide and attain the right temps and humidity, while hiding.

With the above conditions provided even the smallest, thayeri, pyro's, alterna, feed readily on pinks. I never had problems, as long as I kept the proper conditions. Of course over the years, I would slip and have to recheck myself, not trick the snakes.

Of course this time of year, folks often have problems because they fail to monitor their temps properly. Most measure air temps, which is not very accurate. Snakes work off off mass temps, not air temps, they could give a flying donut wheel about air temps. In the winter, mass temps normally lag behind air temps, so you have to maintain higher air temps to allow the same mass temps you had in the summer months.

In the field we measure internal body temps. Which is never, the same as air temps. Ok, every once in a while its the same, but the vast majority of the time its above or below the air temps.

So why not make sure your conditions are good, then most likely you would not need to resort to trickery. Merry Christmas

n/p

Good points Frank but perhaps you could offer her a few clues for maintaining Thayeri. For example, have you found that people tend to offer too little humidity.
Merry Christmas. Hope to see you in the hills this year.

Because I have no idea how this keeper is keeping their charges, I really cannot recomend anything.

But, the most common mistake with baby kings, is keeping them to dry.

The biggest problem is confusing wet with humid. The key to reptiles is, being humid and dry. A concept that escapes most folks.

Once a couple of decades ago, I decided to test something along this line.

I watch a number of difference species in nature. Some colubrids can sit coiled in one spot for a couple months. Never leaving to drink water. Yet, if we try that in captivity, snakes without water normally do not live all that long. Consider, the vast majority of individual pyros, or getulus kings are rarely and I mean rarely exposed to drinking water. They normally obtain their moisture from their prey.

So I set about raising pyros without ever giving them water. The result was, they grew absolutely great, and far better stools, and looked wonderful. But I could not keep them in a normal standard way. That is, I have to serverely restrict air movement, in fact, I allowed nearly none. I had to provide a constantly high humidity without keeping them wet. Basically, they lived in the substrate.

This year, I kept an adult lacies for 9 months without giving it water, again, it did great, no problems. Most peoples monitors would quickly die without water.

To me, this tells me we are keeping them poorly, if we HAVE to have drinking water at all times. Cheers

You make an excellent point. I'll see what I can do about their husbandry, if anything can change, but otherwise tricks are all I *can* do for now. When someone takes them home, I believe they'll do much better.

Thanks for the reminder, though!

~jenny
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"Polysyllabism in no way insures that what you're saying is actually worth being heard." - Blake (an e-friend of mine)

"I have never made but one prayer to god, a very short one: "O lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And he granted it." - Voltaire