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I just recieved a male black pine from a "friend" of mine. He was starting to cool him off already but when I recieved him he looked a little thin, and I still havent recieved the female I'm getting so I decieded to warm him up try to feed him some to put some weight on, and wait for the female make sure shes in good health and cool them both at the same time. For some reason hr refused to eat. Is there any pointers anyone could give me to illict feeding in him? If he dosent eat do you think he'll be ok to go through cooling? I will also be moving to florida soon and wanted to know if it is ok to keep black pines there? Thanks V.Caruso

OK..you really shouldn't do that. Once you start cooling him down and he has a brumation response triggered (triggers are temperatures, photoperiod, etc.), you need to go ahead and brumate him. He is not eating (probably) because he thinks he's brumating now. That is really a good thing, because you don't have enough time to feed him up, empty his gut and get him into brumation for an acceptable period of time now. As long as he doesn't have folds of skin starting to show on his tail or his spine isn't showing up as a ridge, he's probably just fine for brumation. His metabolism will slow to the point that he's not using much of his reserves. We tend to keep our animals a little on the fat side in captivity anyway. In the wild he would probably look a little thin to you, but he would actually be perfectly healthy and ready for brumation. If I were you, I'd just go ahead and cool him off, assuming his gut is empty (no food for at least 3 weeks).

To my knowledge, Black Pine Snakes are perfectly legal in Florida.

Thanks very much for your help. Vinnie Caruso

Vinnie two things came to mind when I read your post. First is the advice about putting him in and out of brumation. Which has been pretty well covered. One other note on that is as oldherper said, the weight of captive animals borders on obesity and it causes numerous problems for our captives. I always suggest that folks think about a healthy wild caught animals and try emulate that body tone and texture. Mother nature is pretty good about that type of stuff.

The second thought though I should pass on to you was the fact that brumating animals can be done anytime of the year. And as long as the triggers are satisfied the animals will and do bred in any month of the year. For many years we rotated our collection in order to try and have young year round and bred them in nearly every month of the year. Recently I have gotten lazy and started just brumating in the normal time of the year as we rebuild the collection. But it kind of neat deal to have babies hatching year round as it makes it like christmas year round.

Good Luck,

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Cherryville Farms - Reptiles