Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Anyone have any suggestions for getting baby C. rhodostoma to feed? I have a clutch of 17 and have had zero success getting them to accept food.

Any suggestions are welcome especially from anyone who has reared them before.

thanks
Peter

I dont have a malayan, but do know someone who has one and for the first year he said they take tree frogs and then after a year switch over to mice. Hope this helps.

Aaron

The first thing I want to ask is "how old are they?" Some people want to feed babies right after they've been born, and sometimes they won't eat for a couple weeks to a month, due to still having full bellies from yolk sacs, etc. And...have they shed yet? Newborns always shed either right after they're born, or within a weekor so.

If this has all happened, then our success (with other small stuff, i.e. slender hognose vipers) has been to tap them on the tail with a newborn pinky to make them, "mad" and they'll strike. Hopefully, they'll hold on and then you just back away and wait very quietly for some swallowing action to take place. This can also work with frozen-thawed pinks. Of course we're doing all this using long tweezers.

Frogs would have been my original answer, but tiny frogs are not always easy to get ahold of, and we've been fairly successful with the pinky-tapping method. On smaller babies (i.e. eyelash vipers) we'll tap with "pinky parts" till they bite and grab. Overall our success rate's been pretty good.

Mine were so small that they could have easily coiled on a fifty-cent coin. I was about to give up on them, having tried everything with pinkie mice (tail-tapping, slapping, etc.), Mediterranean geckoes, anoles, etc.

That fall I happened to have a lot of recently transformed toads (Bufo speciosus) in the back yard. Desperate, I said, "why not," and threw one in with each snake. Instant tail-luring! Grabbed and swallowed immediately!

Within days they were reacting the same way to pinkies and have been vigorously feeding on mice ever since.

Tom Lott

My babies are bigger than that...They would easily be capable of taking a pink if the little beggars just would...I have had zero success tease or slap feeding them...as soon as I touch them they just start zooming around the box. Every now and than I can get one to hit a pink but I have seen no attempt to hold on to it.

The toad idea sounds good...anyone have a couple hundred recently transformed toads?

The babies hatched out in late September so they should certainly be hungry by now. I am NOT going to pinkie pump 17 baby Malayan Pit vipers... I need all my fingertips.

If you can find/get/buy ONE toad, you can try scenting. Couldn't hurt!
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

Scent with a green tree frog. Malayan vipers do not like to be teased. Sent defrosted pinkies after you have throughly rinced the rodent scent away and use the slime layer from a defrosted frog and bounce and scrape the pinkie in front of it, near it, but do not touch the viper or it will loose interest. Mulch allows the viper to settle in, so try it. The frog should last months in the freezer and the vipers will take pinkies on forcepts if you are eager to learn the method of bouncing and scraping the food item near the viper. But be tactful about not disturbing the viper before you try this method or else it will be afraid, and trying just before lights out is better. Good luck

I have bred rhodostoma several times over the last 15 years or so, and I agree with Maryann Harter, you need to give them some time, let them shed, etc.

I tried scenting pinkies,(mouse) with frogs and lizards with varying success, however teasing them with day old rat pups frozen-thawed,washed, (holding them under running tap water, to remove as much as a rodent scent as possible) and then offering them with forceps, and tail tapping to elict strikes,and once struck and left overnight, works about 100% with me. I know a rat pup seems large for them but it works for me. (remember, day old pups)

Randal Berry

I have had numerous baby Malayan Pit Vipers and the first ones I had were very stubborn feeders on fresh pink and frozen/thawed pinks. I had no access to tree frogs and looked for other options. The first thing that caught my mind were fish. I purchased feeder guppies from a pet store and attempted feedings by heavily scenting pinks with the guppies and placing the Malayan in a deli cup in a dresser drawer that was completely dark and left it overnight. For the few that would not eat on the scented pinks I went ahead and fed them fresh live guppies with a small bit of water in the deli cup, just enough to keep the guppy alive to entice the Malayan to eat. From my experience they do not grab and hold on to anything or react very well to tease feeding. The method I have used has worked very well for me, I have never had a problem with it whatsoever. I hope it works the same for you should you give it a try.

Cheers!
James & Anja
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Cheers!

Anja
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To James:

"If I had my way
We'd sleep every night
Wrapped around each other
Like hibernating rattlesnakes."
William S. Burroughs
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I purchased wholesale lots of very small African Clawed Frogs (Xenopus) and used those with good success.

Unfortunately I came to rely on this method of feeding and didn't bother trying to swap them over to pinks ASAP as I normally would if I was using wild frogs. Initial tests showed the animals from this source to be clean of parasites, so I did no further testing. After a few months of success with this tactic, I suddenly found every single frog eater badly sick or dead.

Thorough subsequent tests on the remaining live frogs from that particular batch revealed an exceptionally nasty and unusual bacteria as well as a heavy protozoan load. Just to make things even more amusing, the bacteria was human pathogenic and considered to be a "flesh eating" strain. What fun. Yes, I did track down the source of the problem - they had been kept in a tank next to some newly imported wild caught frogs from Panama and the same nets were used between tanks.

Anyhow, no more frogs for me. After that bad experience, I'd rather assist feed than risk a repeat of that disaster. They definitely do eat live Xenopus, but you might want to try freezing the frogs and scenting a live pink with the defrosted carcass as that would be a bit safer.