Reptile & Amphibian Forums

eat pinkie mice as a first food item? Any scenting required other than lizard? I am having a heck of a time with two hatchlings at the moment that don't seem interested in anything. Just wondering how common this is for hatchling house snakes.

Next question - anyone know who is currently working with amelanistic house snakes?

Last question - the Aurora house snake - are these as hardy in captivity as the common fuliginosus? Thanks for any help.

Mark,

I got two clutches of eggs from a single female early this year and end of last year. Out of those two clutches I have only two surviving babies. The female was probably too small to have been bred but I bought her with a male and they had been housed together so I didn't have much choice. Now that being said, the two surviving babies are pinkie eaters although they were so extremely small that I could only feed the absolutely smallest newborn pinkies to begin with.

Now they're taking regular size pinkies. I had three other hatchlings that steadfastly refused to eat pinkies. Two were oddly very small and thin and seemed to have difficulty locomoting. I suspected they wouldn't make it anyway however the third one appeared normal but just wouldn't eat for anything. I tried scenting with a dead anole and even applying pieces of anole skin to the head of a pinkie and got no results. Of course I tried all the other tricks too, like live pinkies, brained pinkies, etc. Really small hatchlings can be sickly and weak and just may not eat.

As for amelanistics I haven't seen any for sale but an old Vivarium article I read seemed to indicate there were some out there but they may have been out there as in the pet trade in Europe or South Africa. I haven't seen any on any U.S. dealer lists.

And as for the other species of House snake besides Lamprophis fuliginosis... I haven't seen any of those on U.S. dealer lists either so I'd guess they're very uncommon in the pet trade here. It may be they're more available in Europe though. I suspect they're probably similar in care needs to the Common Brown House Snake.

Matt Campbell

n/m

I have seen a lot of variation in baby house snakes. Some females produce large babies that eat readily soon after hatching. Others produce very small babies that are slightly reluctant to take a pinky.

I have found with patience most babies will take pinkies. Rarely will they take any other sort of prey but I have seen success with scenting with treefrogs.

As for the other species, most of the other babies are smaller than even baby fuliginosus. The baby aurorae I have seen were absolutely tiny.
-----
Chris Harrison