Living Safari’s Thoughts

REPTILES
A reptiles habitat is the most important part of their well being. Reptiles are a picky lot, and they must have environmental conditions which match their habitat surroundings in the wild. When it comes to eating, live or frozen rodents or fresh fruits and vegetables (greens), they MUST have a means to thermoregulate their body temperature. This means they must have a warm side and a cool side in their habitat. We recommend that all the heat sources be on one end of the habitat, and the other end is for food and water bowls. The ability to regulate their body temperature allows them the process of digestion of their food, it they can not regulate their temperature, they will most likely regurgitate the food to prevent it from rotting inside them. Along with the temperature gradient, the warmth of their cage will often determine whether they will eat or not. Most people feed their snakes out of the cage in a separate cage to reduce the chances of becoming cage aggressive. This doesn’t mean that temperature is not important to snakes for eating, they should be near their optimum temperature when removed from their cage to eat. Many snakes have varying degrees of feeding resistance, meaning that they may be shy, not warm enough, or only like to eat in the dark. If you have a snake which shows any of these signs, try something differnt in your approach to feeding, put the snake in its feeding cage and put it in a completely dark room, raise the temperature a few degrees of its habitat, or simply place a towel over its feeding cage. Most of the time, resistance to eating is temperature related. Some of the supplies you will need to ensure your reptile is living in the correct habitat conditions are: thermometer (infrared or analog), Hydrometer (humidity gage), UVB light to simulate the sun. One of the things to remember about keeping reptiles is that we are constantly trying to improve their odds of survival, from that of surviving in the wild. When reptiles are first hatched or born, they take constant care, to give them the best odds of making it to maturity. But even when captive breed, there will be some that just weren’t created to make it, they will come in the form of not as active, shy eater, skinny, malformed. That is why it is very important to get a reptile that is well started and a known good eater. We only sell reptiles when we feel they are past the critical stage of eating and growth (well started). We also only feed fresh greens, gut loaded crickets/roaches and live rodents as the animal will find in the wild. We supplement their food with the necessary Calcium with or without D3, multivitamin, and specialty created diets. You will not find healthier, more active and better cared for reptiles anywhere.