Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have 2 Ptuophis Deppei Deppei, Bulls, They are normally both really healthy eaters but in the past week or 2 they have gone comletely off their food.

I imagine it is to do with the time of year but would be greatful if someone could clarify this for me and answer a couple of questions:

1) How long does it normally last if they are in hibernation ?

2) Are there any special things i need to do to help them ?

3) Should i continue to offer food on a weekly basis ?

Thanks

Andy

Hello Andy,
What I think you need to do is go get a good book on Pituophis and sit down and read. I'm not trying to be disrespectful but there is a lot more to this subject than one can just put into a post. There are many factors that effect how to hibernate, and the length of hibernation. Health, weight, temps and so on are some of those factors. Assuming the animals are in optimum condition and there are no health problems: First you need to make sure there is no food leftover in their stomachs. How I do this is I raise the temp of that enclosure to about 90o for about 2 weeks checking them often for feces. Once I am sure that they are all cleaned out I start to decrease the temps over the next three weeks. Dropping a few degrees every other day or so until I reach my optimum burmation temp of 55 to 60o, then I leave them alone checking on them about once or twice a week to make sure they have'nt turned their water bowl. I put my snakes down about the last week in November and bring them back up around the second week in February. I then reverse the heating process to reach optimum temps.

Hope this information is useful and good luck,
J.P.
SnakeGuys.com
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Thanks for your attention SnakeGuys,

The thing is i think i wrote the wrong thing in my original post, I don´t actually want to put my snake into hibernation i just wanted to check if this is the reason they had gone off their food and if there were any special requirements i needed to look at during this period whilst they did´nt wish to eat.

Thanks again for you information

Andy