Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Thanks to everyone for their help with what is best for the little King at work. (I will try to get hold of a Digital cam and take a picture of him to post.) I feel much better knowing that re-release is NOT the right move & good housing/care is to be the focus now that he is WC....which leads me to my next question(s)....
Since I own snakes is there a risk of passing parasites, pathogens,salmonella, etc. to my own household and 'babies' if I were to handle this Kingsnake? Or is handling a wild snake turned captive a ridiculous idea anyway? I will probably get hammered verbally for saying so but I'd love to tame him a 'lil, since he is a baby yet & get him to a more peaceful state. It took me a year to get my own King (Pueblan Milk Snake) to stop squirting me with musk (I bought him when he was 9 months) but he did eventually stop and came to be a true pet for myself and my sons, often out of the cage and in someone's lap. Stevie Ray used to love to curl up with my youngest son, then age 6 and would lay for hours on his belly as my son watched TV. He liked to ride in the car and would stretch out along my arm, with his head in the breeze, almost like a dog does! I lost Stevie Ray when he was 11 years old, he came down with a bacterial infection and despite Vet care and tons of money, he lost the battle to the infection so my concerns are sincere. The Vet had said probably a "bad rat". I'm ignorant when it comes to wild capture and so I would like to ask : Can you tame a wild captured king snake? Has anyone out there done it? Is it safe for myself and my two snakes at home for me to handle him? Or am I best just offering to help with his water, clean cage and not handle him at all? (Geez I hope I phrased this one better!LOL!!)

Cleanliness..........Always wash your hands kinda simple but I think that would be the best advice. A wild caught snake I think would be fine as a pet people do it every day, though alot may not admit it.......it happens. If I was to briing in a wild caught snake into my collection it would be quarantined for awhile and a fecal exam by a vet. Then it would still spend some time by itself. I think you would be fine to handle the snake in question as long as you practiced common cleanliness.Good luck.
Toby

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www.Wood-N-Snakes.com

Hey I love it!!! This could turn out to be a great thing all the way around for the lil king, for my love of snakes and for the crew at work that is disturbed by lil king peeing on them all the time! LOL!! I am definitley willing to invest in his healthy future. I just had no knowledge of wild capture but am quickly learning. Thank you so much for taking the time to help me out!! I'm smiling big time!

I'd get a bottle of one of those alcohol-based hand cleaners and try to find a place for it near the cage. I'd clean my hands up to the elbows before an after every session of holding him. Doing so should greatly reduce the chances of you passing anything to him or passing anything from him to your snakes at home. My California Kingsnake likes to crawl into my shirt. I don't mind letting him do that, but I wouldn't let a strange snake or a snake at work do that. If I let the snake at work do that, I'd certainly change the shirt and shower before letting my own do it. What Toby said is right.

Bill

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It's not how many snakes you have. It's how happy and healthy you can keep them.

That's good advice! I carry a bottle of disinfectant everywhere. I was a scaoutmaster and we had lots of snakes go through the hands of the boys at campouts, so cleanliness is a must. No one ever was ill on my watch! Quarantine is a definite must! I use a 90 day period and as stated, a fecal would put your mind at ease. A lot of people will not even consider introducing w.c. into their collection, and I don't blame them. I have 18 w.c. snakes in my collection of 33 snakes, and I must say that they are all individuals but almost all have acclimated well enough to hand feed ala JETZEN-style, lol! I have some pituophis that have attitudes, and some baby specks still musk, but like you, I expect them to acclimate well in time with frequent handling. I know you don't agree with w.c. snakes versus captive bred, but some of mine are rescues and some were target species picked up while road cruising, so many would have become roadkill anyway. I can afford to keep them well, so I think they will be better off with me! Here are a couple of my w.c. turned captives who will produce what you may buy some day!
Todd Hughes

Like Toby said common sense sanitation is the best policy. A alcohol based hand sanitizer used on all areas touched by the WC would be smart. If you want to go overboard I am sure just taking a shower and changing clothes when you get home from work would eliminate all vectors for transferring anything.

Also as Toby said a fecal done by a vet and treatments according to what is found would also be of benefit. Try to avoid any vet that wants to give a "shotgun" medication. They do still exist in the vet world. That would be giving a dewormer and a anti protozoan medication without checking to see what the snake had. Basically give your location and see if anybody has a good vet for your area.

I would hazard a guess that the co-workers might be throwing in WC food items and that should be stopped. A king can eat what it does in the wild because of the temps available in the wild. It can go to the right temps to try and kill off parasites when needed and it can change its diet according to what it "thinks" will be best for it by the condition it is in. In captivity you simply cannot provide all the options that the wild offers so you are restricted to a captive diet of "clean" rodents.

So
1. Sanitation
2. Vet check up
3. Captive diet

Good Luck
Jason

I go by the assumption that all animals in the wild have parasites, so you should take the proper precautions to quarantine your animals.

When you look at how abundant parasites are in the world and how their life cycles are perfectly molded to correspond to their respective hosts, there really is no way for any predator in the wild to avoid getting them. Every single prey item is a potential vector for disease, so if by chance you do catch a snake that turns out to be parasite-free, that means the snake hasn't had enough meals in its lifetime either because it's still a baby or because there's a shortage of food. This is actually a method scientists use to gauge the effects of habitat destruction and pollution since a missing link can effect the entire food chain.
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www.BugChick.com

chickabowwow

Hi-ya Cindy, it looks like you're getting some good advice from quality people, this forum is'nt so bad.