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hey

i have never kept these guys but i am thinking about it. any reccommendations or tricks with them? also how does their venom compare to that of green mambas and blacks im assuming its similar but i just wanted to know for sure. any other info that might pertain to these guys would be great. thanks in advance!

>>i have never kept these guys but i am thinking about it. any reccommendations or tricks with them? also how does their venom compare to that of green mambas and blacks im assuming its similar but i just wanted to know for sure. any other info that might pertain to these guys would be great. thanks in advance!

In my limited experience:

Behavior is pretty much standard mamba. As far as I know, venom composition is similar to greens and blacks, potency is in between but closer to blacks.

Have you kept other mambas? If not, I would suggest starting with an eastern green to get practice dealing with thier tricks before moving up to a jameson's or a black. And if at all possible, find someone experienced with them so show you how to handle them and supervise your first few times.
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Larry D. Fishel
Side effects may include paralysis
and death but are generally mild.

>>>>i have never kept these guys but i am thinking about it. any reccommendations or tricks with them? also how does their venom compare to that of green mambas and blacks im assuming its similar but i just wanted to know for sure. any other info that might pertain to these guys would be great. thanks in advance!
>>
>>
>>In my limited experience:
>>
>>Behavior is pretty much standard mamba. As far as I know, venom composition is similar to greens and blacks, potency is in between but closer to blacks.
>>

--almost, but no cigar. according to numerous references, venom potency of the five ssp. of Dendroaspis is as follows, starting with the most potent:
D. polylepis
D. viridis
D. j. jamesoni (including kaemosae)
D. angusticeps--

>>Have you kept other mambas? If not, I would suggest starting with an eastern green to get practice dealing with thier tricks before moving up to a jameson's or a black. And if at all possible, find someone experienced with them so show you how to handle them and supervise your first few times.

>>-----
>>Larry D. Fishel
>>Side effects may include paralysis
>>and death but are generally mild.

i've seen a few angusticeps that would scare the daylights out of you for handling, and polylepis that you could probably freehandle by someone insane. temperment is as individual as any other creature, and i think it's a dangerous assumption to generalize on any species. the "moving up to" reference trivializes the seriousness of keeping mambas, as if they were models of sports car or something similar, and should be discouraged.
presumption is the root of all error.
keep a Spilotes without being bitten for a year first. better yet, leave the mambas in the wild where they belong.

>>--almost, but no cigar. according to numerous references, venom potency of the five ssp. of Dendroaspis is as follows, starting with the most potent:
>>D. polylepis
>>D. viridis
>>D. j. jamesoni (including kaemosae)
>>D. angusticeps--

I failed to specify (very bad) that I meant angusticeps. I wasn't aware (more like forgot) that viridis was that potent. Since I haven't worked with them yet I haven't payed much attention to their stats.

>>i've seen a few angusticeps that would scare the daylights out of you for handling, and polylepis that you could probably freehandle by someone insane. temperment is as individual as any other creature, and i think it's a dangerous assumption to generalize on any species. the "moving up to" reference trivializes the seriousness of keeping mambas, as if they were models of sports car or something similar, and should be discouraged.

I certainly didn't mean to trivialize the keeping of mambas, but as jamesoni venom is 3 times more powerful than angusticeps, I think that makes angusticeps a better place to start.

>>presumption is the root of all error.

I think the only significant presumption I made here was that anyone who's been keeping snakes long enough to be THINKING of mambas would already know that behavior varies by individual. I work with a polylepis that, as you say could probably be freehandled and have worked with 2 other blacks that were by far the scarriest snakes I've ever dealt with (and I've worked with forest cobras, a png taipan and 10 foot kings).

>>keep a Spilotes without being bitten for a year first.

I hear this a lot, but I really diagree. 75% of dealing with mambas is learning to keep your cool and deal with the situation. Working with a nonvenomous snake just isn't going to give you that adrenaline spike that messes with your brain like the first time a mamba climbs your hook... There's something to be said for having the physical pratice at using your hooks on a squirming snake, but that doesn't mean you'll be prepared for an unhappy mamba.
-----
Larry D. Fishel
Side effects may include paralysis
and death but are generally mild.

Quotes by uv7bk:
"keep a Spilotes without being bitten for a year first. better yet, leave the mambas in the wild where they belong"

"i'm sure the mamba ripped from the tree, or the large viper pulled from the jungle floor, thrown into a bag, then to a wire/plywood holding box with a gazillion others until some are grabbed out and again stuffed into yet another bag, into a cheap crowded crate, flown for how many hours on planes to some importer, into a fishtank or worse a rubbermaid, and then shipped out yet again to some guy who will then put it in yet another probably undersized enclosure for the rest of its life - doesn't feel too good about this. for what? so you can simply sit and watch it (or breed it and flood the market with yet more snakes for more insecure people)? "

uv7bk, you think its alright to rip a Spilotes from a tree and keep it as a pet, but its wrong to take a mamba from the wild. Do you know what the word hypocrite means? Are you a zoo worker who feels insecure because he knows private keepers of venomous snakes are just as successful in keeping and breeding venomous snakes and private keepers don't have to kiss butt to keep their jobs so they can work with venomous snakes??

i havent actually owned mambas yet, i do have experience with a lot of other venomous though. from what i had heard the jamesons were like the calmer of the mambas also the least harmful. since i have heard other wise i am going to get greens first. it was a tossup between the two of them. im not ready for blacks yet. thanks for your help!

"i havent actually owned mambas yet, i do have experience with a lot of other venomous though. from what i had heard the jamesons were like the calmer of the mambas also the least harmful. since i have heard other wise i am going to get greens first. it was a tossup between the two of them. im not ready for blacks yet. thanks for your help!"

Your best bet for a calm mamba is a long term captive (not necessarily a captive raised) Eastern green (angusticeps). My captive born Eastern is absolutely fearsome because of his powerful feeding response. He has learned that humans = food so he comes out snapping for his dinner at any keeper who approaches. All of my wild caught rehab Easterns are absolutely calm and docile, though they weren't necessarily so when they first came in.

I've rehabbed a number of mambas from all species and the Easterns turn out the calmest. Westerns can get fairly calm also but they seem to be a little less predictable - I'm not sure as I've only worked with a few Westerns. Many Jamesons never do calm down. Black mambas do get amazingly calm, but it can take quite awhile and some will retain a dangerous feeding response. Especially if you teach them bad feeding habits like handing them mice on tongs.

Please be careful when purchasing a freshly wild caught imported mamba. They absolutely need veterinary attention when they come in, and if you aren't prepared to go hands-on to provide this, please purchase a long term captive animal instead that has had fecal exams and no recent capture injuries.

At the moment I have too many &^%$@ mambas because a lot of the capture injury cases get dumped on me from the local importers. I am considering finding them somewhere else to live, but my standards for who I'll send snakes to are extremely high. A lot of zoos can't even meet them, let alone private keepers. Also their vet bills tend to exceed their actual value so there is no way I could sell them for anything close to what I spent to save them. So I guess I'm kinda stuck with'em. Oh well, there's worse things in life than a house full of too much mamba. LOL

More details on the rehab mamba cases at http://www.snakegetters.com/demo/vet/

Having kept and reproduced several Dendroaspis species I can tell you, you should really consider a quality cage with shift doors, especially due to your inexperience. Also, as crazy as it sounds, if you do not plan to work them via shift caging, then keep multiple animals in the enclosure..the constant movement against each other reduces some of the flightiness seen in these animals...BY NO MEANS am I saying it makes them easy, but it does help, again especially if you do not have experience with this genus....
Hope that helps

>>Having kept and reproduced several Dendroaspis species

I was under the impression that no one has ever successfully reproduced any of the green or Jameson's mambas in the US and that only a couple clutches of blacks have been produced. There was a man on the Eastern portion of the country earlier this year with ch Jameson's, but they came from a gravid w.c. female. Did you actually breed and hatch greens? You say several species so with the limited number available I can only assume you mean agusticeps, viridis, and jamesoni. Just curious. Thanks.
-Chance

In my experience these guys are very nervous and flighty. I see a lot of bad nose rubs when they are kept in cages that are too small or that have insufficient cover that help them feel safe. I don't really see that with Easterns or blacks. Most Jamesons will feed fairly readily on mice, but all of them will have assorted parasite problems when they are freshly imported. Some of the holdouts that are suspicious of mice may respond very well to a small finch.

I generally whack them up with 50mg/kg of both Panacur and Flagyl right off, either tubed down them during the initial physical exam or in a small dead mouse if they're eager feeders. I always do a hands-on exam on freshly imported mambas because quite a few will come in with broken bones and other capture injuries that require veterinary attention.

Jamesons aren't too much different to handle than other freshly imported greens - thrashy and flighty on a hook, likely to wiggle frantically and try to jump off. The ones I worked with seemed to take a lot longer than the other greens to calm down and accept being handled. They are an absolute b!tch to tube but all imported mambas really have to be examined thoroughly or you can miss some fairly serious problems and injuries.

If I can see a visible capture injury I do a fast injection of Diazepam to prevent struggle and the risk of further injury, delivered quickly to the tail or via a pole syringe. If they do not appear to be visibly injured I pin them on a soft mat or use Gentle Giant tongs a few inches below the neck in order to get the tube over their heads. Jamesons are a real pain in the rear to do this sort of thing with, wiggly and thrashy and slippery, but it's hard to say whether they're any worse than the other greens. Blacks are probably the worst nightmare because they're a lot more likely to come back around at you. The greens mostly panic and try to run the other way. I generally prefer to use the Pro Bagger to get big blacks into a tube, and I'd probably do the same thing with a large Jamesons that acted snappy.

wow,

thank you so much to everyone that has replied to this. i have made up my mind and i have decided to go with an easter green to start off with. they were what i had wanted in the first place but i had heard horror stories about them. now that i know that they are the calmer of the mambas i feel a little more secure going into this. i knew that i wasn't starting with a black though thats for sure. due to their size and terrible reputation.

from what i have read eastern greens are the smallest of the mambas (around 5' 6" average) and being that they seem to be less agressive and more flighty it makes it seem to me like they are the way to go.

thank you all for your help.

Good pick. Do keep in mind that Eastern green mambas are still mambas, and they can be a challenge to handle when they are having a bad scale day. Most of my animals have become quite docile and easy to work with after a few months in captivity, but that does not mean they cannot still deliver an amazingly quick bite if they feel hungry or threatened. Their physical capabilities are quite impressive.

Consider a long term captive animal rather than a fresh import, unless you have the means to make sure it gets a thorough veterinary exam and treatment. If you're anywhere near me (Central FL) I'll cheerfully help you find one that is well started, dewormed, examined, acclimated to handling, etc. Mamba rescues R Us! LOL

I need to speak with you in regards to some Dendroaspis Angusticeps.

Joe

I just wanted to add for all those who read that you must've been instructed properly by a veterinarian prior to giving the diazepam and any injections. Sedation should never be taken lightly and if anyone feels it is necessary, lock up your snake and contact your hot herp veterinarian.
Joeysgreen, Animal Health Technologist