Feeding Hyspiglena - [Corn snake lovers beware!]

[anji1971]

Very interesting pictures, and topic!
When it comes to feeding, I'm not one to have an issue with much of anything. In nature, the cycle of life and death can be quite vicious. I think it's we humans who try to soothe ourselves by making the whole feeding issue as humane as possible.
If an animal needs to eat, it needs to eat. That's just the way it is, and when we keep an animal intentionally, then it's our responsibility to keep it thriving, whether it bothers some people or not.
I do credit you for pointing out that some species aren't found in captivity often for a reason. It's easy to get carried away and want to keep anything you find. Doesn't always mean you should! A good reminder in general.
Very nice nightsnake, BTW.

[Charlet_2007]

that's all our speckled king eats is other snakes.. ive found a breeder that breeds corns as well and am now getting deformed and dead baby snakes off her.. So im tottly in the same boat your in..

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Any stillborn, deformed, weak or starve-my-self-to-death snakes are used for feed here at my house. My tiger salamander eats them. My cali king will not eat snakes (weird, huh?)

I also will not feed a snake that died due to reason unknown (as in it was not a hatchling snake that starved itself to death or otherwise) Because If the snake died of some disease... parasite... etc... I don't want to take that chance.

[Garter_Gertie]

[quote=aSnakeLovinBabe;I also will not feed a snake that died due to reason unknown (as in it was not a hatchling snake that starved itself to death or otherwise) Because If the snake died of some disease... parasite... etc... I don't want to take that chance.[/quote]

Very wise, Shannon. Good you mentioned that.

[Aundrea]

WOW Very interesting pics. Thanks for posting them. I have never seen pics of a snake eating another snake. I know weird eh? lol.

[reptile3]

Great pictures... Very interesting. I too have never seen another snake eat, a snake. Thanks for sharing.

[Loren]

I will be working with a lot of difficult WC species. I just purchased a beautiful adult male Desert Patchnose from Arizona for $2. LOL They couldn't get him to eat anything for a month after they caught him and didn't want to keep trying so I took him. 1 day later he took a live anole. So hopefully I can get a female feeding.

Cool!
My Mojave Desert Patchnose takes rat pinks very well. I think it ate the first time I offered it.
I have 2 low profile hides for it, just big enough for him. One on the heat (around 90 degrees f. ) one off the heat. At first, I left it alone as much as possible, and offered food to it right into the hide.

No heat lamps or overhead lighting at this time, just a row of 4" flexwatt set to 95 deg. although my diurnal snakes will hopefully soon have flourecent lighting to give them more of a daytime, at least for a few hours a day.

I have the cal nightsnake on lizards and frogs, shovelnose and ground snake on crickets, and I think all the rest of my snake species/subspecies eat rodents. The rarely seen(in captivity) snakes are very neat, you just have to alot enough time to figure them out. Some desert snakes eat fine at typical snake temps, others seem to require temps more suited for a diurnal desert lizard. My ground snake didnt do well until I gave it a hot end of just over 100 degrees. And never underestimate the value of good tight hide spots. Low profile too.

[tyflier]

As in nature, the sick and weak are always first inline to be eaten.

Completely off the topic: I was checking out your corn genetics morphology page covering the definitions of motley and striped. All godd, but I just wanted to add that, even though motley is co-dominant to striped (share loci), its effect is actually dominant over striped. You can have a completely striped corn and have it not contain any gene for striping. A lot of breeders or pet shops don't know this, but the info re: this can be found in Charles Pritzel's Corn Morph Guide. The way to tell the difference is in the width of the stripe. If the stripe is as wide as perhaps say the width of a motley circle, it is homo striped; if the stripe is skinny, < width of a motley circle, it will be homo motley or the shared het motley/striped. Blew my mind! (a het within a co-dominant pairing!)

Steve

Yes, I know. I have the '06, '07, and '08 Morph Guides by Chuck. Very good books, IMO. I wanted to keep the morphology as simple as possible, along with the genetics tutorial. No need to confuse people more than they already are, IMO.

[GartersRock]

Cool Loren! I get the feeling it won't be long until he will take mice! He took another lizard today.

And you're right. It's all about figuring out what makes them comfortable.
Thanks for the tips!

[ssssnakeluvr]

any babies I have that pass on or are put down due to deformities or other are fed to my leopard gecko..he loves them. I also fed them to my desert kingsnake....but he went in a trade to the rescue.