Our grand opening for my new wildlife center is this weekend and I am real happy at how our couperi exhibit looks. I had some of our "junior zookeepers" (volunteers in 8th grade) help put it together and we are all real proud of the end product. If someone can post the pic I would be happy to email someone. In short, we have a young adult male eastern in a 6' x 3' x 2' enclosure. We are built up the back wall with cypress mulch w/various native grasses "planted" in foam blocks and the back end is kept in place with some beautiful hollow logs which the snake uses as a retreat. The front of the cage is a humus, soil, sand, peat, dead leaf litter substrate; man it looks great and so far, it has been very easy to maintain. With a few plants mixed in this exhibit is getting rave reviews. We have also seen a DRAMATIC change in behavior with this naturalistic set up....lots of foraging, wonderful behaviors and a seemingly very happy snake. Maybe its time to go "au naturale" with all of my herps!
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observations on our new couperi exhibit...
Replies (3)
Rob,
Send it to me, I'll try to post it.
Regards,
J.
Rob,
Are you going to feed them in this enclosure?
Just wondering if you are concerned about substrate injestion.
Also...just fyi, I have had some couperi develop skin irritations
long term on cypress. Some never do...
Something just to keep in mind. Good luck. I want to get more info from you at some point. I really want to try this.
PS: I'm still in VA...I managed to get internet access in a cafe. Won't be able to check email regularly for another week or so though...
Dean
I should have a pic up sometime this week. The back "wall" is cypress but it is more to keep the grass background in place. Most of the cage is a combination of soil, peat, leaf litter, humus, and sand....makes for a wonderfully natural look. We are feeding our snakes in these set ups in plastic bins and haven't experienced any problems with it. We had our grand opening of the wildlife center today and the response we received from the public was overwhelmingly positive. When you get back in town, we'll talk spilotes!
