1 year update

It's recently been Furia's first birthday, and roughly a year since I brought her home with me, so I thought I should do an update on her, aswell as give a brief explanation of the challenges this first year has thrown my way.

A year ago, Furia weighed 19 grams and measured 53 cm. Now she's at a staggering 194 grams and measures 114 cm. See for yourself:

Furia as a hatchling (in blue)

Furia 3 months old:

Furia 8 months old:

 Furia at one year:

Color change. It's obvious that, apart from having grown a lot, she's also experienced a great color change. She's progressively shifted from a dark olive green to a blueish grey shed after shed, literally. As opposed to my corn snake, Furia's shed skin is always greyish as if the skin's pigment is coming off with it as she goes lighter in color, and I think it's awesome.

Feeding. She has a lot to grow yet, for sure, but I believe she will be a fairly small specimen. She is a super picky eater, which is odd for a Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake, but it is what it is. She will fast some days before going into shed --which is always a pain in the ass because you absolutely can't tell when the moment will come-- and also when in shed. But she will randomly refuse food for whatever reason I've not been able to pinpoint yet. 

This has led me to follow a very strict feeding routine that I stick to no matter what. Finding a routine that suited Furia has not been easy, and I've come to deduct that:

• She doesn't like her mice to be thawed in water, as it seems to lose its scent.
• She gets nervous if I take out her favorite hide if she's under it right before I feed her, so I need to take it out at least an hour before feeding her.
• If I wiggle the prey before her she will panic and attack it as if it was a threat, so I need to be gentle and finding the right wiggling degree is not always easy.

I know. Finicky eater. Admittedly, feeding has been the most difficult part of keeping her so far. Not all was on her though, as I've had monstruous difficulties to find a decent mice supplier; keeping snakes in Spain is not a thing, so there aren't many local breeders and sadly, when there are, they suck. I've finally found Xaraleira and have been loving the quality of their mice as well as the packaging and customer care, so I will stick with them even if they are kind of pricey.

Taming. What drove me nuts at the beginning with Furia was her nasty behavior: she hated being handled, she was hissy, nippy and flighty. I quickly decided I didn't want a cracken as a pet, and I implemented a taming programme very soon. 

It was successful too, so I now have a VBB yearling that is adorable. I cannot say that she likes to be handled, and I can see that it stresses her in some way, but she never ever tries to bite me anymore. The taming programme worked after a little over a month, but I've kept handling her quite often to prevent her to go back to her old habits. 

Terrarium. Furia will need a bigger terrarium soon, as she's already using all the space in her 90x45x45 ExoTerra. I've put some more thought into the custom vivarium I want built for her, and I've finally decided to make the dimensions match the shelve the current terrarium is on... so it'll probably be a 150 cm long terrarium, with 35 cm width and 60 cm height. I really want to make the most of the space, so it'll have different levels for Furia to climb on. It seems like a decent space for an adult VBB to me, don't you think?

As you can see, this past year has brought a lot of growing on Furia's side and a lot of thinking on mine. I am glad to say that I am the owner of a happy healty VBB!

Scale up!

M.

How to feed a Vietnamese blue beauty sanke? - Video

Hey :)

Here's a video that I've made of an average weekly feeding session with The Fury. It differs from the feeding technique I put in place when she was a little baby, as feeding her in a different enclosure has not proven to be the real deal over time.

           

As you can see, I am currently feeding Furia two small mediums per week. I have three more mice to go, and have decided to go up a size after that, as there is no visible bulge in her body after swallowing both preys... Depending on how big the mediums are, I will probably skip from a weekly to a 5 days regimen.

See in my area there's not many mice suppliers to choose and pick from, for snakes are not all that famous in Spain. My local supplier is a great guy though, I am not complaining, he's passionate about reptiles and loves to chit chat about them, but as far as mice sizes go... meh. Until now, I've been working with smalls that looked like big fuzzies, so I am not confident that mediums will honor their name. We'll see!

I hope you like the video, and if there's something in particular you'd like to see feel free to let me know.

Scale up!

M.

Snake Stats - March 2014

Hey!

Here are March stats:

	Length	Weigh
2 March 2014	79 cm	81 gr
29 March 2014	83 cm
1 April 2014		93 gr

At roughly 8 months old Furia is starting to develop a nice feeding response and becoming much less of a finicky eater. Except when due a shed, when she will ALWAYS become super secretive and will refuse any food item she's offered. I have tried, and there's no way to trick her into thinking she's not in blue...

Also her blues are starting to show more on her face and she's slowly quitting her former earth-toned olive green. 

Growth-wise, I feel like she's bulking up a bit. She'll probably stop growing at monster rates and progressively get a heavier body, which seems normal for a yearling to be.

She has become such a nice and tame girl that I may be forced to reconsider renaming her. I don't handle her as much as I did when I was carrying on the taming program, although I try to handle her at least 2 times a week. I have observed that if I don't she quickly gets jumpy and nervous during handling sessions. She barely ever rattles or hisses anymore, and when she does it's when she feels threatened by the mice I am offering her, which doesn't prevent her from eating it...

No wonder why she's grown so much! Judge for yourself:

When I first got her:

5 months later...

Scale up!

M.

Housing a Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake - Custom made vivarium project

Hey!

One of my main concerns when I bought The Fury was setting up an appropriate environment for her. 

Vietnamese Blue Beauties are not exactly like Corn snakes or Ball pythons, if you know what I mean. Furia will eventually grow to an astonishing 260 cm. Just try to see this from my point of view: being an average Spanish woman, when my snake will reach her adult size she will be 100cm taller than me. It's shocking.

I addressed the topic of housing a VBB in this post, so definitely check that out if you're looking for more general information. On today's entry, I will address my plans and projects for this ever growing girl.

I am currently housing Furia in this ExoTerra glass terrarium (90 x 45 x 45 cm), and it's been perfect so far. High enough for her to climb and long enough for her to wander around and (hopefully) not getting bored of her surroundings. Given her current length (79 cm), this terrarium is going to last her some more time, but it's absolutely not a permanent solution.

So after putting some thought into this I concluded the best thing to do is to get a custom made vivarium, large enough to be her home when she's a full grown-up. Assuming she'll reach 260cm, I've settled on a terrarium that's 160cm long, 60 cm wide and 80 cm high. It sounds to me like the mother of all terrariums... It may of course be bigger, but that's already a pretty darn big enclosure.

As for the materials, I am willing to stick with glass because it's easy to clean and visually attractive. It lets the light through and works perfectly fine with under-tank heaters. If built properly, a glass terrarium can last a considerable time, and that's exactly what I am looking for. I will most probably buy from a local shop; after closely examining their work I found it neat and practically built, plus they can implement a couple of changes I requested. They actually sent me a picture of one of their biggest terrariums (still smaller than what I intend to get)            ==>

The thing with a monster terrarium like this is that you have to get a shitload of stuff to put in there: branches to climb, places to hide, plants, rocks, ledges, etc. And: (i) buying nice stuff (I am thinking Magnaturals) in Spain is impossible; (ii) buying it online from the UK or the US is quite expensive due to shipping costs.

And yet, having quite a full terrarium will be necessary when I'll first move The Fury from one terrarium to another, as being overly exposed in a place she isn't familiar with will be a considerable source of stress. 

I don't think I'll move the beast until she's over 100 cm, and I've noticed she's bulking up rather than growing in length, so I think I still have at least 6 months ahead of me to plan and think (and build?) everything I want to put inside the custom made terrarium. 

To be continued...

Scale up!

M.

Snake Stats - February 2014

February in figures...

	Length	Weigh
2 February 2014	68 cm	57 gr
23 February 2014		72 gr
2 March 2014	79 cm	81 gr

This month has been way more stable than January: no shedding process, hence no fasting for the Fury. Plus I decided to start a short plumping up regimen after her last shed on January 27: I fed her twice the first week and regularly after that. It seems to have been effective: she grew 3 cm in January and 10 in February, with roughly the same amount of fasting days.

Bad shed, what to do? How to manually remove un-shed skin from a Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake.

After being in blue, your snake will eventually shed its skin. If everything goes well, you should end up with one piece of old skin going from the snake's nose to its tail.

If your snake has had a bad shed, you'll find scattered pieces of old skin in your terrarium. Make sure you're able to complete the puzzle; if not, keep reading! If it's had an awful shed, you'll notice this:

Can you see the wrinkles forming on The Fury's skin? Nasty. Her old skin was still adhered to her new one, and she hadn't been able to slither off of it. In some parts of her body, ragged pieces of skin were hanging:

After taking a close look to Furia's terrarium, I found this:

Obviously not enough skin to cover a 50cm snake, this was the ultimate evidence of a bad shed.

Un-shed skin has to be removed as it may impede a correct blood flow and even lead to necrosis. After a bad shed, quickly examine your snake in order to evaluate damages. You have to pay special attention to (i) retained eye caps, and (ii) retained tail skin. Every piece of old skin must come off, but eyes and tail are especially sensible. In some cases, a retained tail tip may cause the death of skin tissue and even tail loss.

You want to make sure that both spectacles have been correctly shed, so you need to look for this:

If you notice un-shed skin anywhere on your snake's body, there are a few measures you can take; ranged from lighter to harsher:

1º The towel method. Cover your snake with a towel and put light pressure with both of your hands while you let your snake slither its way out. If you find ragged pieces of skin in your towel, the measure is working. Consider repeating. 

Tip: this measure works well when the un-shed skin on your snake is still humid. If dry, skip to the next one!

2º Moisturizing with olive oil. If there is a stubborn piece of skin refusing to come off, you can apply olive oil (or any other oil) to the area with a cotton ball and let the skin get impregned by it. After some minutes, try to manually remove the old skin. If it doesn't come off, let it work by itself. Put the snake back in its terrarium and come back later to see if the skin has effectively been shed. If not, you can repeat or try with the methods listed below.

This method is not appropriate for a large un-shed piece of skin!

3º The humidity cure. Place your snake in a R.U.B. with a damp towel covering 100% of its floor. Leave your snake in there for several hours or overnight. Humidity will help the old skin to come off. If there's stubborn un-shed skin, you can then use the towel method above.

4º The warm bath. Put enough warm water to cover 2/3 of your snake's height in a R.U.B., as shown below, and let your snake bathe for 20 to 30 minutes. After that, try the towel method explained in no. 1.

Tip: you can also put a folded towel in the RUB floor; it will get extremely wet, but will likely help the old skin to come off easily and naturally as your snake wanders by. This works best if you put part of your snake's body between the tower folds (and pray it doesn't move too much).

5º The manual removal. After all other measures have been tried and failed, try to manually (and very gently) remove your snake's old skin. For this, the snake's skin MUST be moist, otherwise you will very likely hurt your snake.

The Fury is a feisty snake, but calmed down by herself when I attempted to manually remove her old skin. I can't say she was comfortable, but she made the process easy by not moving as she felt it was something good, I guess. Either way, it took me a good 30 minutes, so you might want to put some music on before you start ;)

Manual removal has no secrets. Just be careful not to hurt your snake by pulling up the skin too fast and don't forget any piece of skin, especially not the eye caps and tail tip. You can try to mimic ecdysis' natural process by rolling back the old skin, from the head to the tail.

I hope this proves useful! If you want to share your results or any technique that has not been listed in this post, please do in the comments section below or by email :) I would love to hear from you.

In the meantime, scale up!

M.

Housing a Vietnamese Beauty snake - Enclosure, requirements, tips and warnings.

You're thinking about getting a snake? Then the first think you're going to need is an enclosure. 

My advice is: get the enclosure before the snake. It will be extremely nervous and disoriented on its first day home, so you want to have its enclosure running correctly in order to minimize the stress.

There are many common requirements any snake enclosure should meet, some that are particular to every snake species and others that depend on the keeper's tastes and preferences.

Common requirements [what you NEED to have in a snake viv']:

• a source of heat
• a thermostat
• 2 or more hides
• 2 thermometers
• 1 hygrometer
• bedding
• 1 or more water bowls
• decoration

As a semi-arboreal species, the Vietnamese Beauty snake should have:

• enough space (according to its size)
• branches / something to climb

Depending on the keeper's preferences, there are many avaliable options regarding:

• the enclosure: glass vivarium / wooden vivarium / plastic RUB (really useful box)
• the heat source: heat mat / hot rock (not recommended) / heat lamp
• the thermometers and hygrometer: classic / digital
• the bedding: newspaper / aspen / coco husk / repti bark/ synthetic grass / etc. 
• hides: specifically designed reptile caves / plastic or custom made hides

Why 2 thermometers and 2 hides? Snakes are ectothermic (cold-blooded: they do not produce heat) and thermoregulate thanks to their environment. You will thus need to have a hot spot and a cold spot in your vivarium, creating a temperature gradient in between, so your snake can adequately regulate her body temperature.

Why do I need to get my vivarium running correctly before I put my snake in it? Leaving your snake's nervousness aside, temperature is very important for a snake's metabolism. It's best to have steady and correct temperatures so that you are not continuously roaming around the viv and your snake can focus on settling in. 

How big an enclosure do I need? For a VBB, I wouldn't recommend having a small enclosure, unless you're capable of acquiring bigger enclosures quite often. Hatching 25 cm long, a VBB is going to grow fast and eventually reach up to 2m60, so you can either: 1. get different sized RUBs throughout your snake's life; 2. get a big wooden / glass enclosure that can last you a while and then up to an adult enclosure; 3. get a RUB / wooden / glass enclosure big enough to house even an adult, or 4. use a combination of the above. 

Warning: If you decide to set an enclosure considerably bigger than your snake, you will probably need to provide it with many places to hide, be it caves, foliage or just plenty of bedding to tunnel into. A vast and bare enclosure will probably be a source of stress for your snake, and more so if it's a hatchling or yearling. Keep in mind that your snake is conscious of its own size and strength, you don't want to over-expose it or be a threat to it.

My gear

Enclosure: Right now I have an ExoTerra Natural Terrarium Large (90 x 45 x 45 cm) that is going to last me for a good year and a half or more, though it's obviously not going to be large enough for housing an adult Vietnamese Blue beauty. Here's the whole set up:

Bedding: Even as a hatchling, I never liked the idea of keeping The Fury on newspaper. I've tried repti bark and visually loved it, though finally settled on Aspen snake bedding. I find it less attractive but my snakes love to burrow and tunnel in it; it's crazy how bedding can influence on a snake's activity, ever since I use Aspen my corn and VBB are out and about in their viv. Trial and error.

How much bedding do I need? I like to provide my snakes with a lot of space to burrow in, so I have around 2,5cm of Aspen in the tank.

Heat source: I use a heat mat WITH a thermostat. Thermostats are not an option, so you need to get one. Unless it has an incorporated thermostat, a heat mat will continually and limitlessly produce heat, and may rise the temperature too much or even burn your snake. So you need a thermostat to control the hot end of your viv's temperature and turn off the heat source when the fixed temperature is reached. In order to get an accurate idea of the temperature your snake may be at, you will need to set the probe directly on the viv's floor, under the bedding, and secure it so your snake cannot move it around and mess with it.

I keep my hot spot between 28 and 30º Celsius and my cold spot at room temperature. 

Thermometers / hygrometer: You will need to have a thermometer at each end of your viv, so as to control the exact temperature of your hot and cold spots. You will also need to be able to control the humidity level to make sure your snake's environment is healthy: too humid, it may cause it to have respiratory issues; too dry and your snake will be prone to a bad shed. What I have is one classic thermometer / hygrometer in the cold end, and a more accurate digital thermometer in my hot end. 

TIP: for comfort, you can tie together your thermostat and digital thermometer probes.

Hides: Apart from the bedding and fake plants, that serve as unconventional hides for my snake, I have a hollow plastic branch and two types of caves: a regular cave (this one) and a box-type shelter like so. 

TIP: snakes feel secure in small places. If you're practical or are on a budget, there's no real need to buy all hides' sizes to match your snake's, you can always buy one or more sizes up and fill it with plants or bedding to make it feel smaller to your snake.

Branches: Although you can't really see them here, I have a plastic malleable branch (jungle vine) going up to 25 or 30 cm, so my snake can climb or rest "in the heights". To be completely honest with you, I absolutely dislike this vine: it is a pain in the butt to place after every clean up and don't seem to stay secured in a place. 

Warning: if you can get your hands on a natural branch to put in your snake's viv just go ahead. But be sure that: 1. it is completely smooth and your snake won't get hurt, and 2. it is properly disinfected. To disinfect it, you can either:

• put it in the oven over 150º for at least half an hour (and let it cool down)
• put it in a mix of water and bleach (or baby bottle disinfectant) for at least half an hour (and let it air dry in a safe place)
• combine or repeat the above

Water bowl: a large water bowl is always recommended when keeping a snake. For a VBB, the bigger the better. These snakes do not require specific humidity levels, but will gladly bathe in their water bowls. 

Warning: if you do not use a specific reptile water bowl, be sure to pick a heavy and steady one. If not, the snake may knock over the container and spill the water, getting the bedding wet. Remember that a very humid environment is not recommended for VBBs.

________

Okay. Now that you have all the stuff you need, your temperatures are stable and your snake is in its new home... be patient and let it settle in at its own pace. 

• For newly acquired snakes, there is a "7 days rule", according to which you should only disturb your snake to change its water for the first 7 days. I know, it's hard. 
• For snakes you are moving into a different enclosure, I'd leave it be for at least 2 days.

I hope this has been helpful. If you have any doubt or comment, feel free to let me know in the comments section below or to drop me an email.

Scale up!

M.