Been gone a long time

I moved home in Dec 2010 and have been really busy renovating the new home and snake sanctuary. The house is huge and old and it had a coach house attached which had been used as a workshop. We had the whole place insulated and new windows in before we could get the snakes into it. Almost everything we needed to do to the house and coach house is done, thank goodness. We also bought a couple of puppies "Chow chows" who take up a lot of extra time on top of caring for the snakes!!
I have taken in about 12 new snakes since I moved which works out 1 per month and I put my male and female Kenyan Sand Boas together to create some more as Susie and Becky the two 9yr old daughters of them work too hard, they are so good at producing the oo ahh factor when first introducing the snakes on educational snake encounters.

Feeding snakes in captivity 2

I know that many people all over the world feed their snakes live food but this is not necessarily the best thing to do in captivity. We must remember neither animal, the snake or the prey item is in their natural wild setting, they are both trapped in a box together. Snakes are not always hungry and it has been known for the prey animal to badly damage the snake by biting it, the prey animal is fighting for it’s life after all. I live in the UK where it is illegal to feed live animals to other live animals in captivity. If a snake is a difficult feeder we have to find ways around the problem, one simple solution is to dip the defrosted rodent into a bowl of hot water then present it to the snakes preferably with a pair of tongs unless you like getting bitten by mistake the heat coming from the food item from the hot water is often enough to make the snake believe it is alive.

Tip for feeding a large python who will only eat rats, pop a small defrosted rat on top of the defrosted rabbits head as he eats the rat the rabbit will go down too, please always use proper feeding tongs especially with large snakes.

Feeding snakes in captivity

Its a good idea to use a separate box for feeding your snake. A plastic box with a fitted lid that cannot be opened easily – place the snakes food inside with a pair of tweezers or tongs and then place your snake inside this prevents any rodent smell on your hands and your snake will get used to the idea of not being fed in its viv; by moving your snake each time this way it will always know your smell as opposed to a rodent and by handling it all the time it will never become nervous of you. If you feed your snake inside its vivarium it could ingest some of the substrate by accident causing compaction in its stomach. It’s easy after the first excitement of owning a snake to neglect the need for handling it and just put the food into the tank, change its water – we need to remember the snake is living in solitary confinement without other animals around or weather, many people have brought their snakes to the sanctuary saying it suddenly started biting them, on investigation I found that the snake was not being handled anymore; large unknown hands suddenly coming into its home can become very scary – we must imagine how we would feel in the same situation and we have ears and better eyesight