The new corn is here!

I'm back from the expo and have my new corn!

After hearing that a snake could be in the same area as rodents and not react much, I moved the tank out to the living room. It's cooler in there as well, so ended up good for temps.

New snake is a male Amelanistic 100% Het for snow. Little over a year old.
https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/files/5/9/4/2/Corn.jpg

We're still thinking of possible names. Any suggestions?

What a cutie, congrats on your new addition.

Oh he's pretty!

Very Nice...are you planning on breeding him?

Thanks. Breed him? I was thinking about it since he's Het for snow. Problem is I would need to kind of 'stud' him out since I don't have room for another snake right now. If anyone would be interested in that, just let me know what weight I'd have to get him to first.

Also, I was told by his breeder that he's been eating F/T hoppers or small mice. Since I only have two snakes, and my partner has refused to have dead rodents thawing in our apartment, I can only feed live(prefered) or prekill. I'll be breeding my own mice soon, so I'll have a fair supply, but I wanted to know if it would be a problem giving him live prey?

Hard to say how he'll react to live prey if he's used to f/t. A lot of colubrids don't constrict fully like you'd be used to seeing with say ball pythons or boas. Lots of time they simply eat the prey live, butt first or sort of slam it around a bit...kind of odd really. Just to be safe, make sure his first live feeding is a smaller than normal prey item without erupted teeth. It won't maybe be quite enough to satisfy his hunger (you could offer two) but it will give you a chance to judge his hunting ability and ensure his first live feeding goes well.

We recently switched our daughter's 05 milksnake from f/t mice to live 5 day old rat pinks. It took her a minute to sort it out but she did very well and actually shows a much greater interest in feeding than she ever did with the f/t mice.

Ah, I see. Thanks for that, Joanna. :)

I guess the best thing for him would be a fresh kill, then. Make sure he doesn't get hurt by a half-live mouse at any time. That said, I wondered if anyone here has heard of/tried the cervical dislocation method of quick kill? It seems the most appealing and quickest to me. Are there any good sites or posts with good instructions?

Here's one link, googling will likely bring you more.

http://labanimals.stanford.edu/Guidelines/Cerv_Dis.html

Hmm, thanks for the good link. I wish it were a bit cheaper to make a CO2 chamber, but at least this is better than whacking the poor things (which is what was done to mice alone at the zoo, larger were gassed). He's set to have his first meal here on Tuesday, so we'll see how it goes.

If frozen thawed isn't an option, what are you going to do with the surplus mice when you are breeding?

I'd invest the $40 or so on the 20 oz paintball CO2 tank and remote coil, it's well worth it. I have 2 tanks and I only have to refill them every 6 months.

I imagine that he'll take the live just fine; they don't lose their instincts just b/c they've been eating f/t. But I always recommend f/t or pre-killed anyways for the safety of the snake. Feeding live (when they will take f/t) is just another chance for injury not worth taking.

My oldest corn has a giant scar on his head from when I used to feed him live (before I knew better). That mouse put up one hell of a fight!

Woh... poor snake. Yeah, I have decided to go with PK. I think I handled it wrong last Tuesday when I tried feeding him. Plus it had only been 3 days since I had brought him home. I'll try again this coming Tuesday with a nice PK large fuzzy (smaller to test him on size) by just setting the mouse in the box and leaving him be. Which do you put in first, tho, the snake or the mouse?? :)

Oh, and I decided against mouse breeding yet. The surplus would be more than I could deal with, unless my local feeder provider would work out a deal with me. As for the CO2 tank, I am thinking of getting one...it would be the easiest PK method. Other than the tank, tho, which is a bit pricey...are there any other CO2 sources for a good small chamber?

Just dry ice or baking soda/vinegar, neither of which are reliable and both of which cost a LOT more than a refillable paintball tank after sufficient use.

I've heard of people also using the small single use CO2 cannisters, the ones sold for BB guns, but those aren't very cheap either and a bit wasteful. Not sure how the logistics of that would work out either.

I don't think it really matters what order you do it in. I feed a rack at a time; so for me it's easier to just line up 7 feeding tubs with the mice in them first, and then put the snakes in them as opposed to doing it the other way.

The only draw back is that I used to have one with an overly aggressive feeding response and if you even remotely smelled of a mouse she thought you were dinner. I had to move her to a feeding tub first, before I even touched a mouse; unless I wanted to deal with a snake trying to eat my hand.

Heh, yeah. I don't think that would be fun. That's the way I do it with my BP...pick her up and put her in her tub first, then go get the mouse. That method also lets me handle her a little bit and get a look at her. Fed her tonight and boy was she game, I think I'll be upping her prey size soon.

Well, attempt #2 at feeding the corn commences tomorrow night...