Outdoor enclosures for Mamba's

I am very fortunate that I live right in the locality of Dendroaspis polylepis and angusticeps. Therefore I keep them in outdoor enclosures and they are very happy and breed in the enclosures.

Looking at the enclosures from the front, they are 2.4 meters wide and 3.2 meters deep. The front half is made of wire mesh and the back half is under cover, so the snakes can escape the sun and rain when they want. The hide boxes are at the back, elevated about 2 meters off the ground.

I can also plant wild living plants in the aviary's, which is nice and naturalistic.

Here are some 'not so good' pictures.

Outdoor enclosures for Mamba's Avairy1

Thanks for looking

Thank you very much craig, that gives me some ideas...
i like the way you keep them, sure they do to...

how high is the enclosure? ad how big is the hiding area Craig, or do you have only a hiding box insight?

last question for today: how did you feed them?

cheers
Mario

awesome setup!

Hi Craig,

nice setup, I dream of having something like that in the future. I´m just wondering how do you clean up the whole thing? Do you go inside? If yes, do you use any protective clothing?

Best regards

Frank

i cant speak for Craig, Frank, but i can tell you, all of my mambas know me very well - so does yours i believe... i can work inside of my enclosures without the animals been very afraid or nervous about me, but i believe, you dont have to clean much inside this enclosure of Craig - as he has all this helper invertebrates crawling around, waiting for the mambas to drop their pup. one of the advances, being in the tropics... (if its the right ants only!)

cheers
Mario

Hi Mario,

I´m sure my mambas "know" me well, but I haven´t and would NEVER take any risk and trust them. My mambas are really curious, they come to take a look anytime I work inside their terrarium. Of cours they don´t want to bite, just take a look what´s going on. That means to me, I have keep the distance and use tools to keep them at bay. In a big cage, where you go inside, you don´t have such possibilities, as the mamba can get you from every direction. If you make a wrong move, things can turn really fast and really bad.
And about the droppings... After feeding my mambas shit several times a day, even in a big cage that makes a lot of dirt.

Best regards

Frank

Frank Weinsheimer wrote:: Hi Mario,

And about the droppings... After feeding my mambas shit several times a day, even in a big cage that makes a lot of dirt.

Frank

i am sure they do - but you underestimate the power of ants here in the tropics...
you should see some of our monkey areas, (they do drop a lot more than snakes do) amazing how helpful and fast this small insects can work sometimes...

cheers
Mario

Hi Guys, sorry for the delay...

Frank Weinsheimer wrote:: Hi Craig,

nice setup, I dream of having something like that in the future. I´m just wondering how do you clean up the whole thing? Do you go inside? If yes, do you use any protective clothing?

Best regards

Frank

Hi Frank, no I dont use protective clothing. The cage is large enough for me to go inside. I hardly ever need to go inside. The water bowls are near the door so i dont need to go in to change water. The mambas are very predictable (long term captives) and when i am in the cage they usually retreat to their corner where the hideboxes are. But I always keep them in the corner of my eye. I only go into the cage to remove uneaten food or fix funiture and tend to the plants.

Cleaning is easy. The back half of the floor is concrete and now and then I will take a hose pipe and spray to wash away any dried poops. The front half of the cage is natural ground and I just let nature handle the poops, so Mario was correct is his assumption. The poops feed the tree and plants as well as the insects.

craig, thanks for your answer...

one question still remains: how did you feed them?

cheers
Mario

Sorry, i forgot to answer this.

Feeding them is no problem. I just throw a few rats in at a time and they share nicely. In the beginning I was worried that they would eat the same rat and end up with one fat mamba. But, they seem intelligent enough to know when the other is eating. Also i notice they will 'only' eat the rat 'head' first, so if one mamba is eating and the other wants his food then he wont find the head and go look for other food. It is this way with both black and green mambas.

Regards...

Craig

That is a awesome setup! I want to talk my wife into moving somewhere more tropical so I can keep my animals out year around.

Wow! That looks really nice!

Guest

Truly great craftsmanship! Craig keep up the good work.

Really nice setups!
So much room for the snakes is just perfect!
My mamba's envy your mamba's Wink

Cheers,
Harold

Awesome Craig I loved seeing them last year, are the snouted cobra's still outside too?

I want to do the same setup soon, but need to do it so my neighbours don't freak out.

Rowan

Realy nice enclosurs!
To bad that I liv in Sweden, a bit to cold her(40 centimeters of snow and 12 degres below)
Regarding the natural helpers. I keep som in al of my enclosurs I use millepieds, pillbuggs, beatels, stickinsects and roches to gether with my snakes. I only keep my snakes in planted vivariums, except for the Crotalus they only have dried gras and twiggs. This help me a lot, I newer have to pick up skins or pop only un eaten food. It also makes the enclosurs more interesting to watch, becase there is always somthing going on in there. The snakes dosent sem to bother at al.
Micke

» Who keeps Mambas?
» A few pictures of all the Mambas species
» Eastern Green Mambas - D. angusticeps
» blue Dendroaspis jamesoni
» Outdoor model for shooting