Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

My father purchased a female Kenyan Sand boa for my brother and I on New Years Eve 2010. We keep her in Rhino Raxx tub system with 90 degrees heat on one side of the tub and room temps are about 73 degrees right now. For substrate we are using aspen shavings for her to burrow in and have a water bowl always full of fresh water.

We waited a few days for her to settle in and then offered her a frozen thawed pinky heated up in warm water. She will poke around at it but will not eat. This was done in a smaller container. We did the same thing with a 1 day old live pinky. Still nothing.

Since then we have offered her frozen thawed and live small pikies. About as small as they get, up to about a week old and no matter what, she will not eat. We cover her up, make sure she is in a dark spot and even have layers of paper towels for her.

We give the pinkies to our Pueblan Milksnakes or Thayeri Kingsnakes and they hit them right away.

So it's been over a month now without a single feeding. The snake is active and does not appear to sick or thin in any way what so ever.

About 2 weeks ago my father finds a guy selling baby Kenyan Sand Boas on Craigs list locally. It turns out that the reptile shop in town acquired them from him. He sells us a female clutch mate that is almost twice the size and a male that is about the same size at the original female.

Now we have three Kenyans. The larger female has eaten 4 times now on frozen thawed, heated up in water, however the smaller male and original female have still not eaten. We always separate them and put them into smaller deli cups when we feed them.

Any advise you can offer? We sure would appreciate it.

At the moment we am not to worried because they have heat, aspen shaving to burrow under and plenty of fresh water which we have seen all three drink from.

We would just like to get the smaller two feeding and growing.

Thanks for your help.

you should try a live pinky in a deli cup and leave it alone for an hour and check the cup and see if it has eaten it.
My kenyan babies that I feed frozen thawed to have to be enticed a bit, I dangle the pinkys in front of their face and if they show interest I will push the nose of the pinky up to the nose of the kenyan and if they are hungry they will usually eat it. others I have to tap the pinky on the snakes nose lightly but enough to irritate the snake and sometimes they will strike and coil on the mouse.
Marc x

Hello Marc,

That's so funny that you say that, because that is how we get the larger female to eat.

This technique does not work with the two smaller clutch mates however. They will have nothing to do with that feeding method at all.

We offered both live pinkies multiple times in a deli cup and left them over night and they did not eat them. They are being really stubborn. I am thinking about catching a couple of small lizard and placing them in individual deli cups with them and see how that works.

What do you think?

When you put the snake in a deli cup is there aspen in it for the snake to burrow? I have found that even snakes that will not eat in an empty deli cup with a pink will take food if they have substrate to burrow in. What I have done in the past is put the snake in a deli cup that has enough aspen in it for the snake to completely burrow. After letting the snake settle in for a bit I put 3-5 live pinks in the cup on top of the aspen and leave the cup overnight at the cool end of the shoe box. Whenever I have tried this the snake has usually eaten at least one (but often times more than one) of the pinks by morning. After once or twice like that they are usually off an running.

Rob

Hello Guys,

Thanks for all the help you gave us and I wanted to give you an update.

My father took us over to a friends house last night that has been breeding snakes for decades.

We went to visit him to pick up some supplies, check out his new ball python morphs and to show him our Kenyans.

He asked to see what snakes where not eating and we showed him. Prior to visiting him, we weighed both of them. One was 10 grams and the other was 12 grams. Really small little guys.

He then put each one into it's own small cream cheese tub that did not have any holes in it and assured us that there was enough air in there to last them for a long time.

He went over to his mouse tubs and started going through them. Only one of his mouse colonies had babies and they were already about 10 days old. Way bigger then anything we thought they could eat and they already had a pretty good start on a coat of fur.

He said unfortunately this is all I have. Lets give it a try. So he placed one in each tub, sealed them up and put them in one of his drawers in the kitchen.

He then made us all wash our hands and took us to his snake room where we got to see all kinds of cool new ball python morphs and learn about the genetics of breeding them.

After about 45 minutes or so of checking out his cool collection of snakes it was time for us to leave. We opened the drawer and removed the tubs. When we opened the lids to check on our Kenyans, to our surprise, both had eaten those live baby mice and had huge lumps in their bellies. Oh my gosh they look like they are about to pop.

We are going to leave them alone for the next 3 or 4 days while they hang out on the warm side of their tubs digesting their big meals.

We are so happy they finally ate and learned quite a bit yesterday too.

Thank you everyone who helped us out.

Justin

Glad to hear they are eating.

Your temps are too low which could be the problem.

Most keep their hot spot between 95-105 and the cool spot around 80.
-----
Mark Huntley
Sand Boa Morphs

Sand Boa's
2.1 Rufescens
3.6 Albinos
0.1 Hypo Albino
2.1 Dodoma
1.0 Nuclear Meltdown
0.2 Flame
10.22.14 Normal (orange)
7.16 Anery
4.3 Snow
1.5 Yellow Snow
0.1 Splash Albino
1.0 Splash Anery
1.2 Orange Stripe Het Anery
1.1 High Orange Stripe
1.0 Yellow Stripe
1.3 High Orange Tiger
4.5 High Orange
1.1 Snow Paradoxes
0.1 Albino Paradoxes
1.1 Javelin Sand Boas
2.1 Rough Scales
1.1 Indian Sunsets F3

Western Hognose
12.7 Normal Hogs
3.2 Green Phase
2.2 Extreme Red het Albino

2.1 Boston Terriers
0.2 Sooners
1.3 Rhode Island Reds
0.3 Barred Rocks
0.2 Range Hens
0.1 Favorite Wives
1.1 On the fence in-laws
2.1 Rug Rats

CHECK OUT MY NEW KENYAN SAND BOA BLOG
http://sandboamorphs.blogspot.com/

WWW.SANDBOAMORPHS.COM

Thank you for the tip Mark.

I increased temps from 90 degrees to 95 inside the tubs and we'll see how that works out.

Justin