General Colubrid Feeding

[ThEmAdHaTtEr]

Hey all, this may not be the right place to post this but here goes: With Colubrids, they are generaly long and skinny. As far as feeding goes, How would you go about doing this? FOr instance, if you had a 200 foot Colubrid and it was as skinny as a pencil, you cant feed it a rabbit. Would you just feed it like 63945 pinkies? (Not literally 200, just a general idea). I have just been wondering how that works for quite some time now. Im used to nice fat boids. :D

[Simon R. Sansom]

Hi Madhatter,
Don't underestimate the swallowing capacity of colubrids!
My seven-and-a-half-foot Cave-Dwelling Rat Snakes, even though they're quite slender, can easily put away a LARGE rat which would be a suitable meal for a Carpet Python of comparable length. AND they do it more often, due to their higher metabolism.
Also, consider the miracles performed by the Egg-Eating Snakes (Dasypeltis), which are also colubrids.

Cheers!

Simon

[ThEmAdHaTtEr]

Yeah thats true, so they are really just the same a boids? Just a single rat.mouse to the diameter of the snake? Thanks!

[Simon R. Sansom]

Madhatter,
Now that I've made the above statement, there IS at least one exception to the rule, I think. Now I don't know this from first-hand experience, but I'm told by several keepers of Eastern Indigo Snakes (Drymarchon corais couperi) that, even though these colubrids attain a very large size, their head and jaw structure does not allow them to take the size of prey that you would expect them to be able to handle. Keepers will apparently feed an adult Indigo several small rats instead of a large one, for example.
If anyone else has any more information on the prey size for Indigos, I'd love to hear about it. I would assume that the same would hold true for any of the Cribos, also.

Thanks for listening.

Simon

[ThEmAdHaTtEr]

Thats what I thought the answer might be. like a long skinny hatchiling might feed on a few pinkies rather than a small mouse...right?

[ThEmAdHaTtEr]

Thats what I thought the answer might be. like a long skinny hatchiling might feed on a few pinkies rather than a small mouse...right?

[eyespy]

Hatchlings usually take one pinkie per feeding, and by the time you've fed them five or six times you can usually move up to a fuzzy already. Once in awhile you get a snake that's hooked on pinkies and then you can feed multiples, but it's best to bump them up to mice with good hard bones. Pinkies are pretty low in calcium.

[reptilesalonica]

the feeder must be equal of the diameter of snake's body at the thicker part. Remember it is better to feed a liitle less than to feed a little more. For snakes that are 10 months old and beyond, don't stay to every week feeding. A general rule is when you see your snake active it is time to feed it. Note that there are other factors too, that your snake can be active (internal parasites, it may be overstressed etc.) The key is observation and knowledge.
~Greg~

[BurmBaroness]

From my personal experience with colubrids, their metabloism IS higher, and they can easily (most of them) swallow prey that is 1 and 1 half times their girth. I have an eastern corn, an albino gopher, and a tangerine milk that eat large mice, and they are roughly 3ft, the corn is 4ft. The girth of these snakes would indicate a smaller mouse, but the large adult mice are not too big, and they are ALWAYS ready to eat again in 7 days.

[Tim and Julie B]

This is an interesting fact: When Tazmania broke off from continental Australia (about 16,000 years ago) it also formed a chain of small islands. When that happened some species went along for the ride including the Tiger snake. Well on one island ( Cape Barren I think) Tiger snakes slowly evolved into much larger snakes then the continental ones. They also developed much larger jaws. They did this because there wasn't enough lizards on the island to feed on. So the main source of food became nestling sea birds. Which required a greater body length and larger jaw to be able to consume the birds. This just shows their marvelous adaptability. They also are losing the tiger stripes and are becoming almost solid black all this in only 16,000 years which on an evalutionary scale is very short period of time. In another 10,000 or less years it may become a different species.

[reptilesalonica]

Yes Burmbaroness but i personaly try to give a little less food to all of my snakes for 2 reasons. It is healthier for the snakes and cheaper for me ;) snakes are oportunistic feeders anyway

[reverendsterlin]

species vary, I know some of my corns can and gladly will swallow large rats 4X their body thickness but I have one that wants something about 3/4 his girth, my female BCO takes down an adult chicken 3X her girth while the Bci wannt a 1.5X rabbit and won't take larger, some of the milks want smaller than their girth, the newborn western diamondbacks want hoppers for a first meals no hard fast rule I can see