Question about handling

[jason_ladouceur]

If you have a venomous snake that requires basic treatment, they are "safe" methods you can use. Tubes work great if what you want to treat is on the body of the snake for example. But if you want to treat the pointy end, like retained eye caps for example, pinning and secure grabbing may be necessary, which of course is more dangerous.

In the past I have used tubes that have been modified by adding a hole in the tube to remove eye caps with tweezers and even to treat a case of mouth rot in a crotalus viridis. I've also successfully used rubber tipped tongs to restrain baby aldaboralis for force feeding. In over 15 years of hot keeping I never had one occasion that I couldn't use tools to restrain a hot for whatever reason they needed it for. IMHO many people are far to quick to pin and head hots. In my experience most if not all medical procedures can be done in a safer manor if the keeper is creative and patient enough. There are possible procedures that I never ran across that can not be performed using tools instead of your hands to restrain a snake. But short of venom extraction I can't think of any.