Santa Isabel Ground Boa Baby - New Owner, Questions, Discussion, Pictures

[Malum Argenteum]

Washing pinks? Washing in what?
KFC grease??? Like from your bucket of chicken????
Scented with ...pureed lizard? ...lol I don't have a blender but... I imagine you put them into a blender?

I'm sorry I missed this when it was posted. Pinks are washed with regular Dawn dish soap, rinsed well and patted dry with a fresh paper towel. Yes, KFC grease from the bottom of the bucket. Scenting with a lizard is done by rubbing the pink on the lizard's body to transfer some of the scent, generally after the pink has been washed as above. Some people do use lizard puree, but I have not tried that.

Though I don't do this anymore with the species I work with except to administer medication, tube feeding is IMO preferential to force feeding. I've kept snakes alive, growing and in apparent good health for more than a year (at which point I gave up and euthanized) with a mix of chicken baby food, egg yolk and Repashy Calcium Plus (eyeballed amounts; no idea how much is the right amount) fed via stomach tube about 2x week. Very easy and relatively stress free for snake and keeper. It takes some research to figure out tube feeding -- find the glottis (really easy, and virtually impossible to miss and hit the glottis), measure down to stomach, get a practiced technique to avoid any coming back up -- and some equipment (I use a dosing needle set from Reptile Basics for small animals, and vet stomach tubes for larger ones).

There's a device called a pinky pump that macerates whole rodent prey and then runs it through a tube, though I've never used one and have read that they're a challenge to get to work well.