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03.11.02
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Today I offered the two tetrataenia whole babymice again. This time the female took the mouse without any problems. The male, too,
took a mouse from the tweezers after a couple minutes of persuasion.
Then a small miracle happened: 005 who had never taken baby-mice finally took one! I have been trying for two years now to get him to eat mouse rather than fish and finally today it worked! The reason for his changed appetite might be that I had him move in with other males of his size which all eat mice. Maybe fodder envy made him eat mouse today. That is kind of strange though, because before he had lived together with 004 and 014 and both of them took mice, too. |
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09.11.02
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I began to prepare some of my animals for winter hibernation today. I haven’t fed for one and a half weeks now and now I’ll start reducing temperature and hours of lighting. |
16.11.02
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The animals that are going to hibernate this year are now kept at room temperatures and without light. They will move into their
hibernation boxes today. In the hibernation boxes I put chopped beechwood for substrate, a hiding place and a water bowl. I will put them on the window sill.
At this time a year the temperature there is constantly at 16°C (~ 60°F). Tomorrow I’ll put the boxes in my Dad’s wine fridge, where they’ll stay at 14°C (~ 57°F) in complete darkness. Every following day I’ll reduce the temperature by two degrees until it is down at 8°C (~ 46°F). I’ll keep them at 8°C for six weeks. During that time I’ll regularly check the animals‘ health, change the water and keep an eye on the substrate (if it gets too wet it will molder). I’ll try to bother them as little as possible. At the end of the six weeks I’ll do all the steps in reverse, which means step by step increase the temperature in the wine fridge, take them out and put them on the sill, keep them at room temperature for a while and then increase lighting hours and temperature to their normal level again within one week. The whole waking-up process will take about two weeks. I’ll start offering food about three to four days after the snakes are back at normal heat and lighting. |
08.01.03
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In anticipation of the following year: All animals that I hibernated have woken up again completely healthy. Only one of the snakes
refused food at the first feeding – it does eat normally again now. I now want to end this insight into one year of care of Thamnophis. I hope you did get
some interesting information and I was able to answer some of your questions. |