- Hey good morning everybody, and welcome to the vlog.
Take a look at this beauty right here.
This of course is an African bush viper, the atheris,
I tell you what, these things are incredible,
and this is one of Bruce's animals,
and he brought it in today because we have to do
a little bit of attention to it.
This happens to be a wild caught animal,
and although we don't do a lot of wild caught animals here,
there are certain species that just,
you can't find hardly any captive breeding,
so obviously you want to establish a group of them,
and hopefully be able to reproduce captive animals.
But unfortunately, with that comes some issues,
and this particular animal hasn't been feeding,
and could potentially have some internal parasites,
so today we're gonna show you guys how to treat
an animal like this, not that I would ever suggest
you guys doing this without a vet or something like that,
I've been around enough of these,
and I've done enough of these where I feel
pretty confident about it.
But let's go ahead, get this little monkey back,
and I'll show you exactly what we're about to do.
And again, a lot of times when a wild caught animal
comes in it can be heavily parasitized.
Can have worms, all kinds of stuff like that.
So typically you wanna use a flagyl,
which is a metronidazole.
It's just a pretty common thing, as a matter of fact,
even people take it when they have a parasite.
And it's hard to overdose it.
You could really kinda crush an animal with the dosage
and you're not gonna have a lot of bad affects,
not that I think you should over treat it.
So we're gonna try to do the best we can.
So relatively small animal,
and we're gonna use this right here to actually tube it in,
but obviously unlike a corn snake or something,
we can't grab it and do that,
'cause we're putting ourself at danger, you know,
these guys have a pretty severe hemotoxin.
Not necessarily a fatal thing,
I think there's only been one death ever recorded,
but still, pretty bad, painful bite,
that you don't wanna get.
As a matter of fact, they used to think they were relatively
mildly venomous, but the truth is is that the hemotoxin
is actually much worse than they thought it was originally,
with some pretty severe necrosis.
So regardless, I have Science Diet AD,
which is urgent care, this is a prescription diet,
and I'm just gonna take a little bit.
I don't need that much.
I figure if I'm gonna tube it,
I might as well get it some protein as well, right?
You know, we might as well get something in it's body,
and that's one of the things when you medicate,
often times you wanna not only get medication in,
but you wanna get sustenance in so that it's
digesting the food at the same time as that
medication is absorbing into it.
We also wanna take some water here, and we wanna hydrate it.
Because again, snakes get about two thirds
of their hydration through prey.
So if they're not eating, of course they're dehydrating.
So the first thing I'm gonna do is just put
a little bit of that in there,
and I'm just gonna dose this about this much right here,
I'll show you, not too much, about that much.
That's about perfect when it comes
to the flagyl right there.
I'm gonna have to make this slurry relatively smooth,
because again, this is a pretty small snake,
so the tube I'm tubing it through
has a little tiny hole in it,
so we don't have a lot of options, right?
So I'm gonna just kind of mix this up the best I can,
try to turn it into the best slurry
that I possibly can here, just like this.
Oh and that should be perfect.
I'm just gonna try to get it really, really mixed in there.
That way you've got the flagyl,
you've got this Science Diet,
you've got the hydration with the water, stuff like this,
and this is gonna do this animal so good.
Now what we might do is we might wanna do this again
in a couple weeks, you know, seven to 10 days maybe even.
Metronidazole can actually be an
appetite stimulator as well,
so that's a really good thing too.
So the animal is gonna become a little bit more hungry,
and hopefully will eat on it's own,
and I'm just gonna try to get this thing
sucked up into this as best as I can.
So obviously we have the girl here,
we're gonna go ahead and let Bruce get her out.
We cut the tube down a little bit.
The idea is, is that we her to be able to get to the end
of this tube, where my hand is gonna be here,
away from the face, I'm gonna go like this,
and actually get this in here,
and we can actually tube her.
That's the idea.
So the first thing we need to do
is obviously just get her in the tube,
get her crawling in the tube,
and that's not hard with an animal like this, you know,
basically, as soon as you get her going,
she should go right in.
There she goes.
(light music)
And here she goes, she's going right in here now.
So we'll just kind of entice her to go in,
and you can see, right now she can't get backwards.
And the deal is, is that as she gets to the end here,
Bruce is gonna be able to hold on
to the backside right here,
and we just want her to get to the end, right,
so that she can't go backwards too much.
So let her go up a little bit more,
and the whole idea, it's gonna be a little bit tricky,
you can see, just gotta be careful.
Gonna be a little tricky because she's gonna
wanna back up, and that's gonna be the hard part.
Now see, she bit right into it,
I can go right down in here,
let her climb up a little bit further.
Yep, a little bit further, my hands are away,
and so you can see, she's actually trying to bite it,
and she's coming and that's where, all right,
hold onto her now, and I'm just gonna ahead and just
really gently get this in here.
And it's got plenty of hydration, water,
medicine, everything else,
and now we're gonna just put her up like this,
so that it all goes down.
We're gonna keep her up like this
just for a little while.
Get her off there, and she should actually now
drink all that stuff, get it down in her gullet.
You can kind of see she's getting it down, here,
getting it down here, and she looks good.
So now we can kinda set her down.
And we'll even let her climb for a minute.
She's taken all that medicine in,
she's got the flagyl inside her,
she's got some Science Diet AD for nutrients,
she's got lots of water for hydration,
because again, these guys need a lot of hydration.
- Oh yeah, without a doubt.
- So, I'm sorry, is this a girl or a boy?
- I believe it's actually a male.
So the reason why, obviously,
like, I brought him to you, Brian,
is obviously this animal is a wild caught animal,
I wanna make sure that I'm doing the right things,
and I'm going to atheris chlorechis
appropriate for this animal,
and all those sorts of things.
So with this guy, he was sold to me as a probable male,
so we don't really 100% know.
- Gotcha, well yeah, definitely,
I mean, judging by the tail length,
I think you're 100% right.
We'll just kinda keep her head up so that she's
digesting all of that stuff, right?
So as it's going up, all that's going down,
the gravity's not,
I don't want her to regurgitate hardly any of it.
She's spit out just a little tiny bit,
which is no big deal, but again,
to be totally honest with you,
not only the flagyl is gonna be really important,
but that hydration is gonna be important.
Now these guys'll drink off of misting and stuff like that,
but the truth is, to get that big dose of water
as well as that nutrients from the Science Diet,
again, the appetite stimulant there,
it's gonna cause her to wanna eat,
and what have you been trying to feed her so far?
- So right now she's been fed live pinkies
and as well as just frozen thawed pinkies, things like that.
I haven't attempted anything like
force feeding or anything like that,
it's not really something I wanna do with this animal.
- Yeah no, and she was willing to bite.
As soon as I hit this tube on her,
she immediately struck at it and tried
to sink her fangs into it.
- And a lot of times I see that happen with a feeding
and stuff like that, that was my main issue,
is that she just didn't seem to wanna hold on enough
and then the moment she would bite it,
I'd leave the food in there, would come back the next day,
and it would rot in there, you know?
- Right, yeah.
Well she is definitely an amazing animal,
and now you can see,
her tongue is coming out really well again,
she doesn't have any of that fluid coming up,
she's not trying to spit anything out,
so I think this is good.
We're gonna go ahead and get her back in her enclosure,
just so she doesn't stress out any more, you know,
'cause that's obviously a little bit traumatic
for an animal like this, but hopefully here,
within the next short period of time
she'll start taking food.
We might have to do this again in a week or 10 days,
just to make sure, get that appetite stimulant,
make sure there's no parasites, keep that hydration up,
and, but what an absolute ripper, huh?
I tell you, Bruce, that is ridiculous, dude.
- Like, we were talking about it before,
I mean, I love the atheris species,
but man, this is one of the pitiful ones.
This is the West African, so you gotta--
- This is beautiful, man, I tell you, look at that.
And those little tiny fangs and stuff like that.
I mean the head itself is literally,
it looks like a painting.
It is unbelievable how amazing these things are.
- [Bruce] Like when you see like old,
like Japanese photos of dragons,
this is what they're looking at, right here.
- Exactly, I agree with you.
Wow, that's amazing.
So this is a beautiful animal,
we'll get him back home, get him set up,
and just let him chill.
But you can even see that little bit of bump in him
where all that food is down there in his gut,
right down in his stomach,
so that's a good sign, that's gonna be good.
I hope that this'll be the first step
in this animal becoming a really good animal.
So there you go, tubing and medicating
a little viper from West Africa.
- Wanted to share with you guys an animal
that I don't think we really talk about too much,
but I'm pretty excited because we're starting to breed.
They are the Indian sand boas.
So the female's right there,
and I actually have the male right here.
So you can see he's much brighter.
So the male is actually called the sunset,
it's that very orange, and this is a normal female,
so we have both normal and sunset females,
and then the one sunset male.
This is something that we can get
first generation when we breed,
so these girls are pretty big, the babies are huge.
So usually I think you're lucky if you get
maybe five, six babies, most,
just because they're so big when they're born.
Again, live birth with the boas, so that's always fun too.
But yeah, like I said, we've got a half a dozen girls
that this guy is getting put to,
so hopefully we'll have some babies later on this summer.
(techno music)
- Got some ball pythons today,
I'm excited about this clutch and I'm gonna
tell you why in a second.
This is actually a champagne,
oh and it doesn't look like they're good eggs.
No, gosh, that stinks.
This is the champagne that I've had forever,
and she's about seven years old, believe it or not,
and she laid eggs when she was 18 months old,
and the last four years she hasn't really
gained much size, and she has not,
oh and she is fired up, look at her, whoa!
Come on mama.
She's definitely gonna protect those eggs.
And she has not laid eggs in like, four years,
so I was so excited, she was actually bred to a
super enchi pinstripe, enchi champagnes are ridiculous,
so oh my gosh, what a disaster clutch because,
whoa, sheesh, mama, it's okay.
We've been so good this year,
but it looks like we just got one fertile egg,
and two, four, five slugs.
One of them, whoa, sheesh, mama is mad.
Again, we'll get her cleaned up so she gets
that maternal instinct away,
so she stops being so aggressive.
Get her calmed down, and hey,
I was really excited when I saw she laid a clutch of eggs.
Not so excited that there's only one egg in the clutch
and a bunch of slugs, but hey,
maybe we'll get lucky and we'll get
an enchi champagne pinstripe or something like that.
Regardless, one egg, what can you do?
But we do still have one other clutch to pull.
Let's hope this clutch is a little bit better here.
This is actually a enchi that's het for piebald,
and it's actually bred to this male right here,
which is actually a pastel piebald ball python right here.
Really gorgeous snake, I mean,
just take a look at that monkey right there.
And of course it's a recessive mutation,
which means that on average,
half these eggs would be pied,
half the eggs would not be pied,
but they could be pastel pieds,
they could be pastel enchi pieds,
they could be enchi pieds,
of course they could be pastels, enchis,
pastel enchis that are het for pied,
all that type of stuff.
Regardless, I was excited to see if this girl
was gonna lay any, ah, good!
I needed a good clutch of eggs, guys.
Even those this is a pretty small female,
probably one of the smallest females we'll breed, for sure,
I was just needing a good clutch
of eggs after that last disaster, for sure.
So I'm pretty excited about that,
and these are some huge eggs.
Again guys, I always mention that,
look at this, this clutch of eggs
fit into that female right there.
How is that even possible?
And again what I'm gonna have to do is remove
this top egg right here,
just because it's a little bit too high for the egg box.
And these are relatively fresh,
so they actually peel apart pretty well,
just really simply like that, we're good to go.
So there's just two, four eggs.
Four eggs, that's a small clutch right there,
but again, a very small girl.
On average, two of these are gonna be pied,
and who knows what else is gonna come from it,
an enchi pied, pastel enchi pieds,
pastel enchis het for pied, all kinds of stuff.
So these'll be exciting,
in 57 days we're gonna see what we're gonna get,
and I'm glad we at least got one really good
clutch of eggs today.
Let's take a quick look before we get started
looking for other eggs to see if my female pastel
that I've been waiting on to lay
that was bred to that black pastel lesser Bongo,
beautiful animal here, unfortunately she still hasn't laid,
so maybe tomorrow.
(techno music)
What do you saw we collect some colubrid eggs?
This first one is actually a coral snow.
Of course that's that really beautiful pink coral snake
that I absolutely love,
and of course this is the male that
it's bred to right down here.
Crazy beautiful, I mean, that thing is gorgeous.
Again, a polygenic trait that's just bred
over generations for pinkness, and wow, yup, good,
these clutches have all been so good this year.
Just such beautiful snakes,
and again the snow corn is actually an albino corn
and an anery corn, so it's lacking red and black pigment,
and you get this kind of cool like, white look to it,
and then over generations you can breed it
for the pink color as well,
and get that kind of polygenically bred coral,
or sometimes called salmon snows.
I'll get her back up here.
We'll get her all cleaned up, some water in there.
Let's see how many eggs she actually has.
Again, a nice beautiful clutch.
Not a huge clutch of eggs, but still,
really nice size eggs, should be really good.
All of these will be coral snows.
Two, four, six, eight, 10, 11 eggs.
Not bad way to start the day.
Next up would be a Mexican black king snake.
Not a big female at all.
Speedy, what are you doing?
Sheesh, there is no social distancing with that animal,
I'm telling you what, I don't know his problem is.
Let's go ahead and see what this girl has.
Again, not a big girl, but a beautiful Mexican black king,
I mean that is just a gorgeous snake.
We'll put mama back in there, good job mom,
you did a really good job.
And a pretty small clutch right here,
big eggs, but it looks like there's only three eggs in here,
so I'm just gonna kinda take a little bit closer look.
Probably candle that one, just to make sure.
It looks like it might have rolled just a little bit.
We'll candle these too just to be sure as well.
So it looks like just three eggs,
just take a quick look, yup, just three eggs from this girl,
but still hey, three eggs is better than none.
Last colubrid clutch for the day
is actually a het strawberry diffused corn.
These guys are really cool animals.
Strawberry stuff is like a hypo thing,
the diffuse is obviously a blood red, this is the male.
I mean, just a really pretty looking male
to begin with to be totally honest with you.
But the more so is what they're het for, right?
'Cause the strawberry is that hypo color
that's just like a strawberry, really,
and then the diffuse is a blood red,
which is actually a reduction of pattern
and kind of this really kind of diffuse thing.
Really small clutch here,
kinda surprised from such a big girl
that she would have so few eggs here.
So we'll just go ahead and pull this out.
Certainly we've got one little slugger right here,
this little guy just needs to get peeled off,
and we'll dispose of that, but the rest of the clutch
looks good, but really a small clutch.
Really small, oh there's another little slugger
on this side too.
Wow, that's surprising for a girl this big,
'cause look at how big she is.
That's usually an animal you would think
would lay 12, 13 eggs.
Definitely a small clutch.
We'll get her back in here, again,
get her cleaned up like as always, get her some water,
but she only had two, four, six good eggs,
and two little sluggers.
So eight eggs, that's a small clutch, I'm kinda surprised.
But you know what can happen sometimes,
they actually have two ovaries and two oviducts,
and so they might have only had one side produce.
So we'll double clutch these guys,
so maybe next time she will have 15 or 16 eggs
on her next clutch, so we'll see how things go.
Nevertheless, that wraps up the colubrid eggs for the day.
It's always exhilarating working with venomous snakes
and hopefully that dose of medicine and food
will help that bush viper, what a beautiful snake.
If you enjoyed that, here's a playlist of a bunch
of travel stuff that I've done
where I've met a bunch of cool animals like that.
If you want you can support my podcast,
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Have an absolutely wonderful day,
remember, be kind to someone,
and I promise I'll see you guys tomorrow.