Eastern Indigos
Feeding the Eastern Indigos FT rats and chicks. These are part of the Drymarchon family and the largest North American native snake. They are also a protected snake in the threatened category. In the Dry family are other indigos as well as yellow tail and black tail cribos. Yellow tails being the largest of the Drys but are native to Central America.
I share this not as a cool thing but more so people don’t realize how eastern indigos eat.
As a colubrid you would think they constrict their prey but actually they don’t. They have extremely powerful jaws and actually crush their prey and often thrash it about as to daze it while most times using their body to help position it for ease of eating. Although they very powerful jaws they don’t open as far so prey items need to be a bit smaller than you would normally offer a snake that size. Because of that I feed multiple smaller prey items and they waste no time walking their jaws and getting that prey down. For as fast as these guys eat their metabolism is fast as well. I feed them usually 3 items about every 5-7 days and in about 3 days we will have the byproduct of that super fast metabolism which is the infamous eastern indigo pooh. If you’ve seen a certain YouTubers video he makes it out much worse than it actually is. They don’t spray feces but lay down a pretty wet liquidy pooh similar to a cow patty. Typically they will avoid their pooh but sometimes they smear it around. Because of their fast metabolism I think that they don’t have the same length of time to digest and process the prey so It does smell like no other pooh I’ve smelled before lol. If you can get past the smell and the are allowed to keep in your state they are a very docile very intelligent animal.
I’ve only had these 3 for about 2 years now and they are roughly 5-1/2 feet. I got them as hatchlings. Although I’m still learning about their uniqueness I’d be happy to share more info that I know of. Enjoy!
Some babies to share with ya’ll. ✈️
1.1 super asphalt pastels
0.1 asphalt pastel
1.0 asphalt
2.1 bamboo blade 100% dh axanthic clowns
4.2 blade 100% dh axanthic clowns
The black pastel het pied to black pastel het pied clutch just hatched out about a week ago. I’m hoping to have them started well by the November 19th and 20th Phx-Mesa reptile show.
The Manx baby girl getting bigger!
