Raising babies
So 4-6 months after seeing your pair of dwarf adders with tails entwined you look in the females’ cage and find a handful of minature dwarf adders crawling about the cage. What to do now?
Baby dwarf adders shed their skin virtually immediately after birth, often the first sign that indicates a female has given birth is the bunch of shed skins draped around the enclosure. Once they have shed the babies will usually look for somewhere to hide so when you are removing the offspring to set them up in rearing tubs it’s important to be very careful when moving cage decor around, not only for the safety of your own fingers but also the safety of the baby possibly curled up underneath.
Housing
Various keepers use various methods when housing newborn adders, almost all will separate the babies into 7-10L sterile plastic containers, some use paper towelling as a substrate while others prefer to set them up on a natural substrate from the start. This is often determined by the species, sand-dwellers like Bitis peringueyi should probably be placed on a sandy substrate whereby they are able to utilize their natural hunting instincts like shuffling into sand. Others like Bitis xeropaga or Bitis atropos probably don’t have this preference and the keeper can provide paper towelling with a couple of small thin rock slabs and a hide provided without any issue.
Feeding
After giving the babies a few days to settle into their new home you can start giving thought to offering them their first meal. It is generally accepted that babies of most dwarf adder species should be raised on F/T pinky mice so this should be the goal. This is quite easy to achieve with species such as Bitis cornuta, Bitis rubida, Bitis inornata, Bitis armata and certain Bitis atropos localities simply because they are born large enough to swallow a pink mouse.
Others are born too small for this and a keeper may be forced to offer lizards as a starter food item moving to pink mice once the snake reaches a suitable size.
While it’s true that many species are naturally primarily lizard feeders this is difficult to maintain in captivity. Many keepers choose instead to control the condition of a snake via a feeding schedule made up primarily of rodents.
Other methods to raise small snakes include,
1. Assist-feeding mouse thighs. In this case a thigh is removed from a F/T hopper mouse and placed into the mouth of the snake. The keeper steps away and the snake swallows the thigh. Of course it is never this easy and it may require repeated attempts before the snake finally swallows the meal. A handy trick when employing this method is to bend the leg and insert the “knee” into the mouth of the snake, as the leg opens up the snake will sometimes instinctively bite down, thereafter swallowing the meal. The downside to this method is the keeper needs to restrain the snake in order to place the meal into the mouth thereby stressing the snake and endangering the welfare of the keepers fingers.
2. Tube-feeding. This method refers to the inserting of a feeding tube down the esophagus of the snake and transferring food directly into the stomach. This may be in the form of minced rodent or a food supplement such as Hills AD. This method is rather invasive and highly stressful, and should be used as a last resort and by an experienced keeper. Given how thin the tube used for baby snakes it is easy for food to block up the hole of the feeding tube making it difficult to push the food through which can be extremely dangerous if the keeper is not careful.
Watering
While it’s true different species have different water requirements all baby adders should be provided with water. This can be via a small waterbowl but due to the size of the enclosure and the sensitivity of many of these species to humidity most keepers prefer to provide temporary water on a semi regular basis. This is done by transferring the snake into a clean temporary container which is either pre-filled with 1-2mm of water or sprayed with water via an atomizer once the snake has been placed into it.
More often than not the baby snakes drink in this manner, either off the sides of the container or off their own body when sprayed.
Some keepers like to mist the snakes within their primary holding container, this is fine provided the water can evaporate quickly and there is no risk of the container becoming damp for an extended period. See Section 4 on “Adders in Captivity” tab.