Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I recently purchased baby scarlet kings and am not sure what to feed. I thought lizard but i don't know how to get lizards small enough. they are big enough for small pinkie heads but won't take them. any suggestions?

... What did you go and do that for?

You ought to try and find someone that can get baby anoles, ground skinks or babies of some smaller snakes like ringnecks, garters, ribbons, DeKays, or worm snakes.

They are too small to force feed and I doubt they will eat pinks (or pinky parts) right off.

Good Luck.

Peter

You can force feed mouse tails but for some reason you get a high mortality rate. In my experence you lose half and get half on pinks. That is why I usually let all the babies go where I caught the adults. I then found out that this is illegal so I stopped breeding them. Last thing I needed was to lose my collection or get fined for letting a snake go so it didn't die. By the way I agree with the logic of the law. I have snakes from all over the world and deal with people at shows that import WC snakes so who knows what is in my collection. I don't think anything is in my collection but you never know. It only takes one guy letting a sick snake go to wipe out a population. The problem is the type of person that would let a sick snake go won't care about the wild population. That is why there is a wild breeding population of burmese pythons in the everglades.
Sorry that was a rant off topic. If you can get ahold of ground skinks than you are half way home. I have never had a healthy SK refuse a ground skink. In fact they will scare you with the fierce attack the put on them. If you get some you can scent mouse parts. The tails are a good item until they get big enough. You can reuse skinks for scenting for quite awhile. Don't let the snake get thin before you take steps to get it to eat, I f you do than it is already dead. They are to small to take alot of stress.
Thanks Jason

that was a good rant jason, not a bad one. it's refreshing to see someone thoughtful enough to realize some of the laws that affect us ARE for good reason. I just had a conversation at the tampa show today (started with hybridizing but turned to releasing animals) and the fella said fla fish and wildlife agent in his area heard he was releasing some things and told him to cut it out. Fella i was talking to had to agree.

Prlbem is we're approaching (or already way past) the point where nothing colelcted from the wild can be trusted to be a naturally occurring wild specimen any more. An animal caught slightly outside the existing known range can't necessarily be considered a range extension; color variations of an animal can't be considered indicative of the native population because it mght be a release, etc. And (since i know albino red rats have been released) the next "wild caught" albino won't necessarily be quite what that name used to imply. It's a shame.

So keep ranting!

terry

They are known to eat fish. Have you tried fish or tadpoles?