I appreciate the kind words. Though I'm a "milk-head" at heart, I couldn't pass up the chance to work with these beautiful animals from a rarely seen locale. They've been a pleasure to keep, and I'm impressed with how well they feed and how quickly they've grown. At around 14 months old they're just shy of 3 feet in length and take adult mice with gusto. While certainly not as quick-growing as P. c. sayi I've kept, they beat the pants off of the small milksnakes I'm used to!
With regard to their husbandry, I keep the P. deppei deppei individually in smallish plastic tubs (perimeter = 1.5-2 times the length of the animal). My experience has shown that small tubs work best with small, nervous milks to improve feeding response and discourage regurgitation, so I figured I'd try similar husbandry techniques on these reportedly delicate Pits. I use shredded aspen as a substrate and keep water available at all times. I offer all of my animals a wide thermal gradient (~88F on the hot end to ~70F on the cool end), which also promotes healty digestion and improves feeding response (...and allows better disease resistance, as John Ginter pointed out in a thread below).
Thanks again, guys!
-Cole
