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So I purchased a WC Blue Racer because I wasn't able to find any CB or any available at all for that matter. It was said to be feeding on frozen/thawed mice in the ad. She is 3.5ft in length and I have tried feeding her live mice as well as frozen/thawed mice to no avail. Is there any recommendations as to what I should try feeding? I'm willing to spend the money on any type of food to keep her fed.

I've started about 20 baby black racers over the years, about a dozen baby blue racers, and kept perhaps the same number of adult racers plus several coachwhips. Racers and coachwhips are high-maintenance snakes and may take all your skills to establish in captivity.

To begin with, keeping racers in racks or un-ventilated tubs is almost a lost cause. They do best with plenty of ventilation and lots of light. I keep my baby racers in large Sterilites with large screened holes in the lids, and full-spectrum lights over the screens. Substrate is mixed dune sand, peat moss and clean organic topsoil, or decomposed hardwood mulch sold as forest mulch. Hiding place is a cupped piece of bark. Occasional wetting of the substrate provides critical substrate moisture and aids in preventing dessication. There is one view among collectors that racers are prone to skin infections and should be kept bone dry, but I don't agree with that. Their skin is more porous than many species and they can dry out quickly. Rather, keep a trace of moisture in their substrate and provide ample ventilation.

A basking spot is critical to success with racers and coachwhips. I don't use undertank heaters, heat strips or heat panels. I prefer to use a low-wattage incandescent bulb to provide radiant heat. In my "nursery" Sterilites, I pass a wire through the lid at one end and let a sealed lamp socket hang from the end of the wire. I put a 15-watt bulb in the socket and leave it hanging close to the bottom of the container so the snake has thermal options ranging from uncomfortably warm to just right depending on how close to the bulb it rests.

Without full-spectrum light, ample ventilation and a basking site where the snake can bring its body temps up into the mid-90s F, there is little likelihood it will eat.

Racers favor other snakes as prey, so if you have access to some appropriate-sized snakes, that's a good start. I've had racers refuse all sorts of food but accept snakes. I've used live snakes and also defrosted road kills, even parts of road kills. Another option is to offer a dead fuzzy mouse dipped in snake puree.

Live fence lizards, frogs and toads are also promising temptations for a fussy eater. In addition to these delectables, I've had many young racers and coachwhips accept brown anoles as food.

My first choice would be to offer a live or dead snake. If there are no snakes available, try a lizard or frog. If your racer accepts any of these items, continue feeding whatever food the snake likes for several meals. Then, try offering a live fuzzy mouse unscented. If the snake refuses the live mouse, try again a day later using a defrosted fuzzy mouse scented with whatever the snake was eating. In time the snake will probaby accept unscented mice.

Racers seldom learn to take dead food that is just left on the floor of the cage. Most prefer to have the food wiggled to trigger a feeding response. I suggest using long tongs to do this, rather than your fingers, which look every bit as tasty as defrosted food to a racer.

Racers need a lot of space to have any kind of decent life in captivity. A wild-caught racer was taken from a situation where it had the run of a large range, one of the largest ranges of any North American snake. Blue racers grow large as adults, and a cage six feet long, 30 inches deep and 15 inches high would be minimum for a single adult racer that had been hatched in captivity. I don't know if your wild-caught racer will ever be satisfied with captivity but a very large cage would help.

If possible, provide a large cage with fan-vented air flow. I make cages with axial fans at the heated end to pull warm air out of the cage and prevent heat from the basking bulb from overheating the entire cage. A vent on the opposite end of the cage allows air to flow in, creating a steady airflow across the cage. The snakes love it and thrive. I've had such good results with vented cages I don't bother trying to keep racers in un-vented cages any more.

The key factors are enough heat, enough space to escape the heat, enough ventilation, soil or mulch substrate (no shavings, no paper), good hiding place that provides a sense of security, a variety of food including natural prey like snakes, frogs and lizards.

If it works and your snake stabilizes, you will have a marvelous creature to care for, one that will deliver a very different experience from most other reptiles. Clever, emotional and spirited, racers will push the limits of your husbandry skills but they are worth it.

Thank you for all this information! I have been doing a few things wrong then, but nothing that I cant fix! Also I think this is the reason she is refusing food. She tipped over her waterbowl and last time I checked the cage it was damp. What is the diagnosis in this picture? What can I do to fix it and make her healthy again?

The photo shows a bit of scale rot, which can be caused by a suite of bacteria and even fungus. It's rarely cause for alarm. I see wild snakes with a touch of scale rot all the time, especially in early spring after they have emerged from moist hibernacula. Let her shed and it will most likely clear up.

Make sure her water bowl is too heavy to tip over even if it's empty. Racers love to rearrange furniture and need ceramic or glass bowls. I find economical water bowls at my local grocery store, in the kitchen section among the dishes and serving bowls. There are several brands of souffle dishes and serving bowls with straight sides, made of ceramic. Most are less expensive than ExoTerra composite bowls or ceramic bowls sold as reptile water dishes, and do as well or better.

I've attached some photos of my Sterilite baby racer/coachwhip setup. Your snake is clearly too large for containers like these but they show key elements of light and ventilation. The best thing you can do for your racer, and your future in the herp hobby for that matter, is to invest in fan-vented cages.

Since your User ID is "pythonowner" I'm thinking you probably have some pythons. Boas and pythons are ambush predators that think nothing of lying around in the same place for days on end, waiting for food to pretty much walk down their throats. Their metabolisms are adapted to allow long periods between meals without harm, and they are really not interested in exerting themselves.

Racers and other sighthunters can't afford to wait for a meal--they are trapped in high-metabolism bodies and must hunt. All the sighthunters are restless, problem-solving, fiesty snakes that need space and plenty of fresh air. No denying that many keepers have racers, coachwhips and indigos in small enclosures without much ventilation, and I've seen those keepers swear by their technique but if they moved their animals into full-spectrum-lit, vented cages I expect they would see a profound change. I speak from my experience on those occasions when I've persuaded keepers and curators to try some vented cages and spent the next several months hearing about what a difference it made.

If you are determined to do right by your blue racer, my thought is that your best next move is to find a way to provide the best enclosure. If you have any woodworking ability, it is really no challenge to make a custom cage out of plywood or mdf clad in formica. If you use plywood, use birch plywood as it is nice and smooth and seals nicely with several coats of water-based varnish. Install several inexpensive 15-watt fluorescent lights in the top, one of which should be a ZooMed 10.0 UV bulb. Also install an incandescent socket at the end where the fan is, to create a basking site. The cages need to be front-opening and have no vents other than the fan vent and an intake vent on the opposite end.

You need to make the cage large, about five to six feet long and 30 inches deep. I make a face frame that sits inside the cage to support the open front of the cage, provide a frame for the doors to rest and lock on, and creat a litter dam along the bottom edge. Doors are simple square frames with acrylic panels for viewing, secured with cam locks.

The heart of the system is the vent fan. Axial fans are available from Grainger, which has stores all over the nation as well as online ordering. You will need a fan that moves 95 or more cubic feet per minute; the fans I use cost about $55 for fan, cord and protective cover (sold seperately).

You will need to be able to make straight cuts to create the carcass, face frame and door frames, and a router to make the vent holes in the ends of the cage. You will need saw blades specific to cutting acrylic to make the door panels and an acrylic drill bit, as well as a high-speed laminate trimming router to create clean holes in the acrylic for the shaft of the cam locks to pass through. Other tools include a drill press, brad nailer and hand drill.

There really is no substitute for the right cage. It saves money to make your own but if you don't have the ability to build your own cage, a local wood fabricator can do it for you.

BTW, if you try a python in a cage like this, you'll notice a difference there, too. Vented cages dry quickly so be sure to stay on top of keeping the substrate moist but not flooded.

Here are the photos of baby racer/coachwhip containers. The top photo is a detail of the screen assembly, made by cutting a square hole in the lid of the Sterilite, then using strips of the scrap to make edge covers for the screen by hot-gluing the strips over the screen edge.

I've made sure the bowl is unable to be tipped, as far as a ventilated cage goes would one of these screen cages be okay to use? I've attached an image down below if it.

My username is pythonowner3 but surprisingly I do not own any pythons or boas I'm strictly into colubrids. This username back in 2002 when I had a baby ball python and I was a bit fresh into the herp world. Since then my main focus in reptiles has branched towards colubrids. I have the necessary lighting currently all I need now is a properly ventilated cage and a fan. Let me know if this seems okay to use as well with the lights, and substrate you recommended should I start seeing results? I know the cage is not terrestrial but arboreal but I think if I put it L side down I could make it terrestrial with the right kind of Plastic cage liner. Also I've used a reptarium before to house a tiger rat snake with success so I was thinking maybe it might be okay for the racer?

Alas I don't think the cages you show in your photos are suitable. Although they certainly provide ventilation, the racer is likely to rub her nose off on all that screen. One feature of the cages I make is that there are almost no internal surfaces that will damage a snake's nose. A few snakes insist on rubbing at the intake vent, and I'm working on a design to cover that with a secondary panel that allows air flow but reduces the abrasive effect of the screen.

While the cage you show is covered in plastic screen, it's still abrasive if rubbed incessantly, which the racer will do. Further, an adult racer can probably break through that screen in time. That cage also does not offer access from the front, preventing you from developing a low-threat relationship with your racer at feeding time.

I've attached an image of a stack of vented, front-opening cages of the design I'm suggesting. The largest cages are 6 1/2 feet long, the medium cages are 4 feet long and the smallest cages are 2 feet long. Exhaust fans are at the ends nearest the basking lights.

I have kept and worked with many types of racers in the past. I have always had a difficult time getting mine to take adult mice especially wild caught. The wild caughts I currently keep started off on grass hoppers, large crickets, and small fuzzies or large pinkies. But I still feel they prefer insects first. I have some long term 4' captives that I seriously doubt would still take an adult mouse. Racers in my opinion really dont constrict there food like a corn or rat snake would so live mice seem to intimidate mine. They like smaller prey they can run up an swallow while it is still alive. My four footers will take small fuzzies or grasshoppers and you can see the prey still kicking in the snakes neck to give you an idea. Some larger coachwhils will take larger live prey however but that is another topic. I have had a few reluctant feeders that would take lizards at first and then soon switch back to insects or small fuzzies once they settle in.

Think small more frequent meals. If you find yours will take insects they will eat almost every day. Once they get going they are incredible feeders.

My two cents
Allen Sheehan

So the snake is doing much better and has had significant progress in the last updates so here are some updates.

5/15 I noticed the eyes started getting cloudy representing a shed.

I've been giving her water/betadine baths every night followed with triple strength antibiotic ointment without painkiller on the blisters. Also been cleaning the cage every night with chrlorhexidine solution.

5/19 Came home from work to check on her and she shed in one piece. Her skin is BEAUTIFUL now. Also she seems to have a lot more energy and the big blister on her neck is now just a scab.

5/20 Still giving her betadine baths and ointment with cage cleaning until next shed (cant be too safe, right?) I offered a thawed mouse today and she ate it up! I'll offer her another shortly as I'm certain shes hungry for more.

Now I haven't changed anything in terms of ventilation or humidity/temp, although I still do plan on changing the ventilation and find a different enclosure also I will be using the substrate you recommended. I'm going to wait until her next shed/ and when the blister is 100% healed. Tomorrow I shall post up some photos of her progress. At this point in time I have a good feeling that she was refusing food on the fact she was shedding.

as promised some updated photos taken today 5/20/11

pic after a betadine bath.

Great to learn your racer has eaten. If she can turn that corner and stay there, she'll recover very quickly. Her native immune response will restore her health so daily disinfectant baths may be moot if her appetite is good.

If she will take it, I'd feed her every day until she has the body mass equivalent of a properly fed Corn snake. Wild blue racers are thick-bodied, powerful beasts.