Baby Malaysian Ophiophagus

These pics were taken almost a year ago, and they've changed radically since them. I'll post updated pics shortly.

http://www.sareptiles.co.za/gallery/albums/userpics/10029/SA401185%7E0.JPG

http://www.sareptiles.co.za/gallery/albums/userpics/10029/SA401190%7E0.JPG

I looked back at this post and realized I never posted the pics of the babies now. They are about 1.3 meters and one is taking dead mice voluntarily and the other 4 eat mice with a bit of snake skin over the head. Something very interesting is that they all eat chicken hearts without a problem! I do not feed them hearts too often, maybe once a month, but they love them! Now where did they learn to like them?? I have found in the past most snakes will eat chicken hearts, including Dendroaspis, Trimeresurus, Agkistrodon and most of the Pituophis and Lampropeltis species. Will try and post pics of the "babies" soon.
Cheers
Gavin

Gavin Carpenter wrote:: I have found in the past most snakes will eat chicken hearts, including Dendroaspis, Trimeresurus, Agkistrodon and most of the Pituophis and Lampropeltis species. Will try and post pics of the "babies" soon.
Cheers
Gavin

My friend have a Drymarchon couperi and he give (occasionally) chicken hearts and the snake like that !!

BTW I'll looking for your ''babies'' pics Wink

chicken heart? interesting - i would love to encourage everybody to post their experiences with raising king cobra babies... seem to be still a bigger challenge for most folks...

thanks for sharing Gavin

Mario

I recently tried the chicken heart, and my Malay King hatchling wouldn't eat it. I also tried chicken livers and gizzards cut into strips. I tried scenting pinks with the blood. I tried braining pinks. Tried scenting with live and thawed snakes. I even put a live baby Cornsnake in with him. It was still there a day later. Nothing. I did force feed him a live pink. The guy I got him from is sending me some frozen Mangrove snake puree, that he used to scent the pinks with. He said the baby kings were eating these scented pinks. So I will try that, and keep y'all posted.

On a higer note, the adult female Malay King I also got from him, is eating f/t jumbo rats with a piece of Gopher snake sewn to the face of the rat. She recently ate 2 jumbo rats sewn together, nose to A**, with a piece of gopher snake sewn to the face of the first rat. This was the easiest King to get eating rats this way.

Randy

another one trick who work is to dress the mouse or rat with old moisten skins from your snakes who has change before,You can make it wet for first and after you can cover the meal with this(I hope you understand my poor and bad English) Embarassed

I used to use ox heart strips with baby Clelia Clelia and baby Causus Rbombeatus. it seem to work in about 90% of cases. the snake skin trick seems to work as long as its not too oldI have a couple of friends who keep king cobras and they all have their own special recipes for coating prey items. one seems to smell like chicken soup? I'm not sure so I'll ask.
I sometimes get baby Nasicornis, usually males who refuse to feed on mice and most of them will take them scented with frog. On that note I had better get some frogs as one of our female nasicornis seems to be getting bigger by the day. she had 14 last time so heres hopeing.
anyone got any tips for feeding baby crotalus mitchelli stephesi? Ive got a female here about to explode.never bred them before so its a first for me.

Well, my baby Malaysian King still will not eat on it's own, so I am force feeding it. It is getting easier.

On a higher note, the 3.65 meter female Malaysian King has been eating jumbo rats with a piece of Gopher snake sewn to the face of the rat every time, and yesterday, I tried just rubbing the thawed rat on a live Gopher snake and she ate it immediately. So, hopefully no more sewing pieces of snake to rats.

Now my adult female Kings, 0.1 Malay and 0.1 Indo, are eating slightly scented Jumbo rats, and the adult Male Malaysian is taking unscented rats.

I remember John Foden had two King Cobra's from Kuala Lumpa Zoo, they wernt babies, grown on, but he got them on to pieces of fresh chicken, cut to the appropriate size.

For my old Javan adults, I used to tie pieces of Tokay Gecko to rats, and eventually weaned them onto rats covered in puree Tokay.

My big female dropped 20 something eggs that hatched (she was gravid when imported), and the babies all had to be assist fed on pinks. It was a real pain!

Cheers

Ty

Thanks Ty I'll try the fresh chicken. I have some thawing already for me. The guy got the baby from is supposed to send me some Mangrove snake puree. He said they would eat pinkies scented with that.

I found that mine would take Retic Python, Asiatic Rats etc. as well as the Tokay's; in puree or pieces, but refused American Ratsnakes period! Others I have spoken to have not found this a problem (same as you Randy). Maybe different localities have different quirks?

I have been very successful getting fresh import Kings to take asian ratsnakes. But they are harder to come by and expensive in America, so I would cut one up into 2-3 cm pieces, freeze them, and scent American snakes, and the Kings would usually switch over to American snakes quite fast.

Using the Albino Gopher snake pieces sewn to the face of the thawed rats has worked great for the adults to get them eating rats, but the baby Malay King will not take a pinkie with a piece of Albino Gopher snake sewn to it.

My buddy swears they will take pinks scented with mangrove snake puree, so we will see if/when he send some to me. In the meantime, I will try the chicken strips. He is in a small deli cup with a live Butter Cornsnake hatchling and he will not eat it. I can force feed him the hatchling, but I'd rather not stress the King.

I have plenty of frozen baby snakes that I have received from friends, and also I breed rats and mice, so have things to force feed to him. I just wish he would start taking something on his own.

Randy

there are folks who raise baby king successfully.. unfortunately, they wont share their knowledge.. the motivation might be to secure their small markets.. in my opinion, it is such a shame, that they do not share methods and tricks to get baby kings going without the force feeding technics... baby Ophiophagus are so freaky sensitive and been easily stressed out and die if you have to force feed them all the time.. i know guys who force feed their kings since years... ours always take gecko gecko without any problems, but not the babies... reticulated pythons are taken by the bigger once, but refused on other times for quite a time.. we even have seen kings living with "feeding pythons" for months in harmony and love...

with the babies we tried everything, insects, caterpillars, pinkies, frogs, baby Lycodon, spiders, ah - cant even thing of somethings we dont try... unluckily always unsuccessful... i never came across any information on what is the normal food-items for King babies in the wild... every time i find a wild king cobra baby i want to open here up and check on the stomach contents... but i just cant kill them.... and we dont even try to raise them here anymore, they will be all released asap...

anyone have any information on the natural food of Ophiophagus hannah juveniles?

cheers
M.

Ah that is easy, Mario ...

Use the one and only ...
http://www.hannahfoods.net/

Razz

Sorry guys, but it was too good not to post

Jörg Porstmann wrote:: Ah that is easy, Mario ...

Use the one and only ...
http://www.hannahfoods.net/

Sorry guys, but it was too good not to post

ah stupid me, should thought about it myself...

It could be so easy:

http://www.kingfoodservice.com/

Very Happy

Still no luck getting the hatchling Malay King to eat on it's own. Nothing has worked, but the guy never sent me any mangrove snake puree either. Maybe I can get some from him at the Columbia, SC show June 20.

I have been force feeding him baby Cornsnakes. He's keeping them down and not fighting me as much when I'm feeding him.

Guest

thats a good start randy.

Hi,

My 2c. I got a pair of juvie Malaysian kings from Gavin in around May last year that still had their juvinle colouration. At the time he was force feeding them a few fuzzies at a time. I carried on with this for about a month and then decided to try various snakes with mice attached.

At first I would use the whole snake and sew (with cotton) two to three fuzzy mice (of the same width) to the end of the snake. They would take the snake and then continue to eat the fuzzies. I carried on with this for about three months, each time shortening the length of the snake and increasing the length of the fuzzies (up to 5 in the end).

Eventually, before attaching the mice to the snake before one feed, I decided to see what would happen if I threw the mice in by themselves. I was pleasantly suprised that both snakes took the fuzzies on their own. Subsequent to that, the female took mice every feed and the male was/and still is more picky (requires some scenting and sometimes only takes snakes).

They are now with a friend and are doing extremely well. The female is solely on mice and the male is still picky.

Not sure if I was just lucky or if this is a good way to go about trying to switch them. I have also been told that the Malay kings are generally more likely to take rodents than
the others?

Thanks.

I originally got in 21 baby Malaysian Kings of which only one dies as it arrived with a respiratory problem. None had ever eaten as they had only hatched about 1 month before I got them. I tried all of them on pinkies and all refused which was what I expected. Then I tried some on tropical house geckoes and some on baby corn snakes and every one of them ate at least twice. I wanted to get something in their stomachs before I tried force feeding them.
Then I started force feeding every week 3 pinkies and then onto fuzzies and then I sold some as that was too many! I have spoken to everyone that bought from me and all are feeding on mice or day old chicks now. Only 1 has died that I know of from the people I have spoken to.
I kept 5 for myself and carried on force feeding them for up to 8 months then slowly they started by themselves taking mice, first scented with snake skin from a dead snake stuck on the mouses head and then they started eating chicken hearts so I jusr scented mice with chicken hearts and now 3 take mice unscented by themselves and teh other 2 take still scented with chicken heart, but all 5 eat frozen thawed day old chicks that are wet and a bit smelly after being thawed out! They wont eat fresh fluffy day old chicks! Very strange! I must try post some pics of them eating when I get time!
Cheers
Gavin

Well, it has taken a while, but my baby Malay King is now eating dead Cornsnakes stuffed full of pinkie mice, on his own. I kept forcing him to eat the Corns, and little by little it got easier to get him to take them. Then, one day I got the head of a Corn in his mouth and I set him back on the tabel and he stood up about 15cm high with the Corn hanging out of his mouth and stood there looking at me, huffing and puffing. I took the Corn by the tail and played tug-o-war with him for about 1 minute, and he kept a good hold on the the Corn. Then he started to eat the Corn right there in front of me, so I put him back in his cage. About 15 minutes later I checked on him, and he had eaten it. Now I am just stuffing a snake with pinkies and putting it in the cage, and he eats it completely on his own.

I guess I got lucky. A friend of mine had two clutchmates to mine, and he had one eating pinkies a few times on it's own, and was force-feeding the other, but they both died a couple months ago.

Something else I will try next. I read this on the internet the other day. Someone said to scent the snakes water, not the food item, with the type of animal you will be feeding them. So, if your wanting your baby King Cobra to eat mice, scent their water with mice, so they will be tasting the rodent everytime they drink. Sounds like a good idea, unless the snake stops drinking because it doesn't like the taste, lol.

The pinks I will be feeding to baby Cornsnakes and Kingsnakes, will be thawed in water, and I will put that water in the baby King Cobras water bowl.

I'll keep feeding him pinky stuffed Cornsnakes and once in a while I'll put a thawed pink in his cage and see if he eats it.

Keep you posted

Randy

Thanks for the update. Really interesting trick that is, wonder if it would work with others aswell which are lousy rodent feeders. Also if the scent is weaker on the water at the beginning and get´s stronger then wonder if it would make the switch faster and if too strong scent on the water would make them stop drinking in the beginning.

Good luck with the baby and please keep us posted with details Smile

Hey Stephan

Your right. I think it would be a good idea to start with a weaker scent at first. We surely do not want them to stop drinking water, especially if the snake isn't eating and getting fluids from the food items.

I will thaw just a few pinks in some water, instead of all 40+ that I need.

Randy

Randy Ciuros wrote:: We surely do not want them to stop drinking water, especially if the snake isn't eating and getting fluids from the food items.
Randy

Yes, i imagine that it could ruin a day or two if that happened Smile

Guest

I have always fed my indo. black racers with no problems. It sucks when they are so stubborn. I just count myself lucky that my girl is so easy going.

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