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I have a new pet..

Vampenstine

Vampenstine

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I got a snake today :D

He's a Royal Python and I've decided on calling him Donnie. (At least, I assume it's a 'he'..)
Anyone have any experience with snakes? Any tips for keeping them?



Sorry for the crappy photo quality, my phone camera's pretty terrible.

View attachment 303
 
He's snazzy :P
I don't have any experience with snakes personally, but I'm sure Google will be able to answer the majority of questions you may have.
 
Best tip I can give you is don't be a ****ty owner who gets bored and releases it into the wild (lots of people do this). Semi-recently someone released their boa constrictor here, and I believe it ate a dog and was found in a garden while small children were playing there.
 
@Vampenstine
What a great pet!! I LOVE snakes, and I had one for about 6 years. (I'd still have him, but the **** got him in the divorce.)
You may have read somewhere on here that I was a vet tech for years, along with owning a snake. Can I ask, how old is yours? You don't know the gender yet? Where did you get it?
I rescued 3 snakes from a moron who had them until he realized he didn't know what the hell he was doing with them, and caused one to go blind. He thought he would "help" the animal as it was shedding its skin by peeling the loose skin from the snake's head. Peeling the skin over the snake's eyes before it was ready to be shed caused the poor snake to lose its sight. That one I homed with a wildlife expert I found through my local Humane Society.
The 2nd snake in the group was a boa constrictor and my friend Angela took that one.
The 3rd was a ball python and he was about 20 inches long when I rescued him. (He was over 5 feet long when I had to give him up to my ex.) I named him "Fuzzy". He was very hand tame; loved to be handled and I took him lots of places wrapped around my neck.
I had him "sexed" at the clinic I was working in at the time, and found I had a male.
There is a probe that is used to determine a snake's gender. It is inserted into their sex organ and the length of probe that can be inserted is what determines the gender. A male snake will take more of the probe into its body than a female will. This is NOT something you can do yourself, it must be done by a veterinarian who is familiar with the procedure.
Another method to learning the gender of a snake is called "popping", and I am less familiar with that one, and it too must be done by a veterinarian. As the name of the procedure implies, the sex organ of the animal is "popped out" and a visual inspection by the vet determines the gender. I've seen it done once, but that's the extent of my experience with that procedure.
What type of diet is your snake on? Live or frozen bait?
I had Fuzzy on live prey, as he wouldn't touch dead prey. I have a video here of Fuzzy feeding. I'd suggest letting the video load, then forwarding it to 2 minutes into the video. It's over 6 minutes long, but the first 2 minutes show the mouse just running around Fuzzy's tank until he snatches the mouse up. Then the whole process of the constriction, the mouse dying, Fuzzy arranging the mouse so he can get hold of it, and how he "walks" the prey down his throat is shown, so anyone who is squeamish about that kind of thing will not want to watch this.
I'm happy to talk to you about any aspect of owning a snake, Vamp. If you have any specific questions, please, let me know. I'll answer as best I can, or help you find the answer if I don't know it myself.

[video=youtube;ss0INpnwTIQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss0INpnwTIQ[/video]
 
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Rebecca Chambers said:
Best tip I can give you is don't be a ****ty owner who gets bored and releases it into the wild (lots of people do this). Semi-recently someone released their boa constrictor here, and I believe it ate a dog and was found in a garden while small children were playing there.
Click to expand...

I think I heard about that, I can't imagine why anyone would think that releasing it into the wild is a good idea..

Pandemonium said:
How do you get one of these without getting info first, woman?! :P
Like Han said, Google might be your friend for this. :3
Click to expand...

Don't worry, I did my research well before getting him :p
Just keeping an eye out for any extra bits and pieces I might have missed, really.

Smooth said:
@Vampenstine
Can I ask, how old is yours? You don't know the gender yet? Where did you get it?
What type of diet is your snake on? Live or frozen bait?
I'm happy to talk to you about any aspect of owning a snake, Vamp. If you have any specific questions, please, let me know. I'll answer as best I can, or help you find the answer if I don't know it myself.
Click to expand...

I believe he's around 3-4 months old, or so the shop assistant told us. We bought him from one of the fairly local pet shops where they seemed quite healthy and happy. They said it hadn't been sexed yet, so we're going to take it to the vets once it's settled in a bit to get that checked.
I've got frozen bait but he doesn't need fed until tomorrow. I'm on my phone at the moment, so I'll watch the video later tonight :o Thanks!

I never thought I'd find a snake cute, but he's actually adorable :3
 
You're welcome!! :)
I thought the same thing; snakes ARE cute!
Are you aware that snakes fast during the winter? Fuzzy spent 5 months without eating a thing at his longest fasting stretch.
 
Vampenstine said:
I knew they fasted, but not for that long! Keeps down food costs, at least? :p
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It varies with each animal. Fuzzy didn't fast at all in the beginning but as he got older his fasts gradually grew longer. Be prepared, because you do worry when they're not eating, but it's completely natural. If food is available, the snake won't starve itself.
As far as food cost, I bought my feeder mice at the local head shop, and they cost about $2.10 each. When I had to send him with my ex, Fuzzy was eating 5 or 6 fairly large mice at a time, once a week. I gave the mice to him one at a time so they didn't have a chance to **** all over Fuzzy's tank before he killed them and being separated, they couldn't gang up on him and bite him while he was feeding on one of the other mice.
To make things easier, I set up a 2nd smaller tank (one that Fuzzy had outgrown) to keep the mice in and alive when Fuzzy got picky about the mice or was starting to fast. (Much more pleasant than having to kill them myself when Fuzzy wouldn't.) I fed them scraps from my own dinner and cat food so I wasn't paying to feed animals that were to be used as food for another animal. I used aspen shavings as bedding for both Fuzzy and the mice. It's clean, it's inexpensive, it's comfortable, it helps keep the odor down and it's easy to clean up and change when you're cleaning the tanks.
Another thing I learned is, during the summer months when it's really hot, even cold-blooded animals need to cool off, so I had a miniature pond as Fuzzy's water supply and he would pull his whole body into it when it got uncomfortably warm for him.
(I'm probably going to drive you nuts, because I'll keep remembering something I want to tell you about this, and post in your thread a dozen times. LOL! :D )
 
What do you feed him with [MENTION=32]Vampenstine[/MENTION]?

I've never owned a snake, but love the idea of owning a bearded dragon, the only thing that puts me off is the fact that you have to give them live food and I don't fancy doing that or storing the food in my fridge.
 
I feed him mice. He was meant to be fed today, but he wouldn't eat.

My sister has a bearded dragon. Feeding it isn't that bad, it's actually pretty cool :p
 
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Vampenstine said:
He was meant to be fed today, but he wouldn't eat.
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It won't take you long to learn his feeding schedule.
Something else that occurred to me after I shut down last night; Before I set up the 2nd tank to house the feeder mice, I would just toss all Fuzzy's mice into his tank when it came time to feed him and he'd catch them at his own pace. It was seeing how much the mice pooped in his tank while waiting to be caught that helped me realize the extra tank would be the way to go.
During that time, there was one mouse that didn't get eaten, and Fuzzy actually seemed to form a bond of some sorts with the **** thing. That mouse spent several days in the tank with Fuzzy and the snake just wouldn't eat it. He was fed other mice which he ate without a problem, but as soon as I would put the first mouse back in his tank, hoping he would eat it, he just refused. The 2 animals sort of "hung out" together! More than once I found the mouse asleep in Fuzzy's coils under his log.
The last thing I needed was a pet snake with a pet of its own, so I took the live mouse back to the place I bought him from and exchanged it for a different mouse, which Fuzzy immediately snapped up and ate.
Good luck with Donnie, and I'd love to see more pictures of him as he grows!
 
So cool! I'm so happy you're enjoying your new snake.

As cool as they are, I don't think I personally could ever have one. Simply because the idea of feeding them live food just... I don't know. I know it's natural and all, but if I got a snake and it required live food, I'd feel so bad about sending a mouse to it's doom. Haha! I'm a sensitive soul, can't help it.
 
Smooth said:
It won't take you long to learn his feeding schedule.
Something else that occurred to me after I shut down last night; Before I set up the 2nd tank to house the feeder mice, I would just toss all Fuzzy's mice into his tank when it came time to feed him and he'd catch them at his own pace. It was seeing how much the mice pooped in his tank while waiting to be caught that helped me realize the extra tank would be the way to go.
During that time, there was one mouse that didn't get eaten, and Fuzzy actually seemed to form a bond of some sorts with the **** thing. That mouse spent several days in the tank with Fuzzy and the snake just wouldn't eat it. He was fed other mice which he ate without a problem, but as soon as I would put the first mouse back in his tank, hoping he would eat it, he just refused. The 2 animals sort of "hung out" together! More than once I found the mouse asleep in Fuzzy's coils under his log.
The last thing I needed was a pet snake with a pet of its own, so I took the live mouse back to the place I bought him from and exchanged it for a different mouse, which Fuzzy immediately snapped up and ate.
Good luck with Donnie, and I'd love to see more pictures of him as he grows!
Click to expand...

Aw, you stole his friend. :(
Not that he cared too much, nor would the upkeep of a pet's pet be worth the inconvenience. :P
 
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