How to Care for Egg-Eating Snakes!

I've gotten several requests to do a video of how I take care of the African egg eating snakes in my collection and to be honest they're probably one of the easiest snakes I have to take care of feeding them is simple it's just a matter of leaving eggs in their enclosure went for when they're ready to eat but if you've tried to look up information for how to take care of them you've probably discovered that there isn't much information out there and the information that you can find is kind of contradictory so I'll show you how I take care of these snakes but take it with a grain of salt and continue to do your research but we'll start with how I set up their enclosures first you need your bedding and if you think about it egg eating snakes don't burrow like hognose snakes do and some other snakes so you really don't need a very thick layer of bedding in my opinion and they they also live in a drier climate so you don't need tropical humidity retaining soil so we are going to use Aspen and by the way you can get this entire bag of Aspen for $5 at Fleet Farm it's like the cheapest Aspen I've ever been able to come across so we'll fill this up [Music] now these snakes do not burrow so you don't need very thick bedding just a like an inch will do and actually if you put too much betting in there that'll take up their space above it to climb around so just an inch of bedding is all I recommend next you need your caves and when I put this in the rack this is gonna be my warm end this would be the cool end so of course make sure that you have a cave on each side so whether they want to be warm or cold they can be hidden we'll add a water dish I've found that egg eating snakes never really soak so you don't need a water dish big enough for them to soak in like you do with a lot of other types of snakes now if you think about where egg eaters live in the wild their environment is not only dry but it's also full of plants there are trees and shrubs because that's where birds make nests and lay their eggs of course so I highly stress trying to incorporate that in their environment at home too by adding strong branches that they can climb on without them falling beneath them as well as these for shelter and also for them to climb on too you can get these at craft stores and this is just amazing Nita bird perch that I put in there and you can get creative with where you put them or how you set it up but just give them a variety of things to climb on since they are such amazing climbers due to the fact that they have to climb trees to grab their food the last thing to add would be their food I use button quail eggs for my smaller individuals and cutter necks quail eggs for the larger ones who can handle them I used to put all of their food together in a bowl because I figured the cup shape would be similar to a bird's nest in the wild but then I thought you know that's just too easy it's not really providing much enrichment for them so then I started scattering their food around the enclosure kind of like a little Easter egg hunt and I found that they didn't care one way or the other whether it was in a bowl or scattered around so this way it provides a bit more enrichment for them and it makes them actually work for their food now we're ready to add these snakes I'm going to put one pair in here this is the female and the males are much smaller than females this is my male he's a cutie now the hardest thing about keeping egg eating snakes is getting them to eat sometimes small ones like this guy do not want to eat anything but Finch eggs so I actually have to syringe feed him occasionally I've found that females are a lot easier to convince to eat in captivity than males are so we'll add them in look at that they're already climbing [Music] unlike many other types of snakes that you should not be housing together you can house these in the same enclosure I know several people who keep breeding colonies together and let's face it even if they wanted to eat each other they couldn't because they have no teeth one of the hardest parts about keeping egg eaters is acquiring their food I get cutter necks quail eggs from the local Asian mark you can buy them in packs of 12 or 18 or so I think it was like $3 for all of these so they're pretty cheap but the tough ones to get are the button quail eggs anything smaller than a cutter necks quail egg is pretty hard to find I get mine from a local breeder just because I got lucky with the right connection but you may have to order these online because I don't know of any stores that carry these regularly and if you need something even smaller than a button quail eggs say a Finch egg the best place to go is a local pet store with that carries finches and maybe you can sweet-talk them into giving you it there there Finch eggs that they would otherwise just throw away one of the coolest things about the snake is how they eat they are pretty for the most part they only eat at night because that's when birds are less likely to see them sneaking into their nests they take the egg and they swallow it whole of course but then they push it to about right here in the back of their throat where there are three big bony spikes three to five big bony spikes right here and those crack the eggshell and then the snake will squeeze out every last drop inside of the egg and when it's empty they crunch up the shell in their throat and then they spit that part back out and the egg eating snake is so good at eating just eggs that it can smell the egg with a flick of its tongue and know exactly how old the baby is on the inside of that embryo because if there is a fully developed chick or even partially developed chick on the inside they can't very easily drink a baby bird so they ignore those eggs and they only eat the fresh eggs that were just recently laid the egg eating snakes natural defense is to rub its skills together because that's exactly what the sauce scaled Viper does which it's range overlaps with in the wild they have keeled scales which means there's a raised raised Ridge in the middle of each individual scale and so it makes kind of a hissing sound when they rub those scales together so they might do that for the first few times when you take them out to hold them but after that I found they tend to calm down and they get used to you and they realize you're not gonna hurt them there are some sources that say egg-eating snakes do not like being handled at all but I have found otherwise once they realize that you're not gonna hurt them they seem just fine they don't show any signs of stress so I personally think it is okay to hold these snakes the egg eating snakes range in size from about 18 to 24 inches for adult males to about 3 to maybe 4 feet for the adult females girls get much larger because they need a bit more room inside of them to develop the eggs and they'll lay around 15 to 20 ish eggs at a time as far as heating goes keep the warm end at about upper 80s or 90 degrees and the cool end can just slowly change to room temperature and that thermal gradient will allow them to thermoregulate as they please because they I've found sometimes they're over on the warm end and sometimes they're over on the cool end they're always hidden unless it's nighttime but that should just about cover it so if you have any other questions comment below otherwise we will see you next time I have moved the band back up into the snake rack and it is important to mention that if you notice there are eggs that have been laying around in the enclosure untouched for more than a couple of weeks it's best to throw those away and just replace them with new ones [Music]

Channel: Snake Discovery

Views: 662,404

Rating: 4.9008565 out of 5

Keywords: snakes, pets, animals, reptiles, egg, eating, eggeating, egg eating, egg-eating, dasypeltis, scabra, how to, care for, feeding, quail, enclosure, setup

Id: 09iL57T3Mtw

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 25 2017