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I have 2 pairs hatched Trimeresurus puniceus babies . I recieved them about 1 month ago . Therefore , until now , they are still no feeding . I tried offered them pinkies , but they was not interested . I have tried several times . They don't lile to move but stay at the same place all day . I can't found any caresheet or data about this species besides their photo . Can you exprence guys tell me how I can start their first feed and ehere I can find their caresheet ?

Maybe I sould try some lizards , geckos or frogs ?

Thanks .

You sid you offered them pinkies. by that do you mean you just placed them in the tank or did you try to tease feed?

Often snakes like Trimerseus sps will be responsive to tickling them near the tail with the pinkie (on forcepts please). This can cause a defensive strike which may eventually cause the snake to hold on (and hopefully swallow).

While I have not kept that species, the ones I have usually respond to this or, in a pinch; a frog gecco or anole.

Frank
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"The luxury of not getting involved departed with the last lifeboat Skipper..."

Although I have not worked with this particular subspecies, I will provide some insight on a recent birth of Tri. albolabris that may prove helpful in getting your neonates to feed.

We had 7 baby T. albolabris born 5 months ago. At first, they steadfastly refuse all food items offered (pinks, frogs, small lizards, etc.). It wasn't until I was at my wits end that I decided to toss a few wax worms into their cage...wham! Much to my astonishment, several greetily accepted these food items.

Shortly after, we decided to go with the tease feeding route and quartered pink heads lengthwise and offered them via forceps by tapping the pink parts on the snake's nose or neck area (or, as rear fang said, tapping the tail). We would always wait until the snake was on one of its climbing branches. This is a very painstaking process and requires the utmost in patience. It will typically take several tried until the snake sinks its tiny fangs into the pink part. At that point, you must sit motionless as the baby will just hang on for a while until it begins to feed; any movement before that will cause the snake to drop the food from its mouth. We would also powder the pink parts with a little vitamin. It wasn't too long before these same babies could handle full grown small pinks which are still being fed via tease feeding but several are now voluntarily accepting them off of tongs. The bottom line is that you need to just be real patient through teh process. Rob

Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, IL

My limited experience with feeding finicky baby tree vipers is that perseverance eventually pays off. I had really good luck with a whole group of T. albolabris babies. I kept them in 0.5l clear plastic tubs (approx 10cm high). I had two or three straight branches (about 2-4mm in diameter) which I siliconed into a horizontal position about 3/4 the way up the tub. I used paper towel in the bottom, which was kept wet 6 days allowed to dry completely for 1 day. I also put some leaves over the branches to give the snakes a sense of security. I think the trick was keeping them on a heating pad. The water in the paper towel would evaporate and condense on the sides of the container, keeping the humidity pretty high (important that you punch holes in the lid to allow ventilation, and the water to evaporate from the container slowly so that it can dry out eventually). My gut feeling is that these guys were at just the right temperature to keep them happy.

After about a week in such a setup these little guys started munching down pinkies like crazy. I had had for a a week or two before in a different setup with no repsonse to feeding. The important thing is that they grew so quickly I had to move them to larger containers just two months later (should have been sooner even).

Good luck, its an interesting species you are working with and they deserve some serious dedication

Ian

hi

you must feeding them little frogs. I has som feeding problems to but now Trimeresurus eating well.

sry my english

I´ve bred some T. puniceus and I have to agree, tease feeding and small frogs is the only thing that works. If that won´t work you have to force feed them. Don´t wait to long with that!

One other important thing with T. puniceus is to keep them a little bit cooler than T. albolabris. Keep them at 28-22 degrees celsius at day and 18-25 at night.
A good article about T. puniceus written by Andreas Gumprecht is in SAURIA no 4 -99. Unfortunatly the article is in german, but there is a summary in english. SAURIA can be ordered from ww.sauria.de , search the archives for Trimeresurus and you will find many interesting articles about this wonderful genus.

Sorry for my bad english...