Having worked in private vet practices, and in zoos I have seen several transfusions of animals. We always used another animal of the same species(including dogs, cats, a rat, a toucan, bearded dragon and a ferret). Not once did we do the blood typing because of cost and time required. We never had the materials onhand either, because it was a rather infrequent procedure. The vets felt that the chances of a cross reaction were slim enough to take the chance.
And we did have many clients that had “pocket pets”, mostly the small rodents, that spent quite a bit of money on them. In spite of the low cost to replace the animal, they were as attached to the pet as many owners are to their cats and dogs.
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Where do they get the blood for animal blood transfusions? (23-Aug-2000)
I have been to a zoo where small rodents are kept to make the rhino vipers (and various other pit vipers and constrictors) fat n’ happy. However, as I recall, they gave the “lucky” white rodents a chilling to slow them down a bit. Then they made use of a nifty tool, some what like an alligator clip on the end on a sufficiently long shaft with a lever to operate the clip, to grab the selected rodent by the scruff of the neck.
After getting the grip on the rodent, they’d get their little noggin’s rapped rather sharply on the edge of the table. This was to pre-“X” their eyes so they don’t put up a fight (and maybe bite the snake). Then the little rodent would get wiggled about in front of the snake’s face so he’d (or she’d) strike and get a mouthful of rodent noggin’. Then, the snake would just suck the rodent on down sort of like a big hairy oyster. Yummy, huh?
I asked the zoo keeper person about the cost of the white rats and they were a bit cheaper than the hamsters. Perhaps they ought to give the snakes a treat once while and feed them some nice fat hamsters or perhaps a gerbil.
Oops. So call me a newbie.
As to whacking the rodents, that is pretty normal. Most zoos recognize that if the snake does not eat the rodent in short order then the rodent may injure the snake(or other reptile). Usually the whacking is accomplished by holding the tail and swinging quickly and breaking it’s neck on the edge of a counter or table. It’s pretty quick. Then the rodent is grasped in pilstrom forceps or some other “long grabby thing” and presented to the reptile. When feeding a large collection of reptiles you tend to go through a lot of rats and the food offered is often driven by the cost. However, many folks offer a variety of food item based on availability, such as chicks, quail, and other rodents including gerbils, hamsters and guinea pigs.
Some snakes, however, have to be stimulated to eat, often by warming the prey item or (recalling a far side cartoon) “jiggle grandpas rat”, moving the prey as an enticement.
There, more than you ever wanted to know about feeding snakes.
I used to have a large boa constrictor and buying rats started to get prohibitive on my student budget. So I set up a box trap over the dog’s food and caught pigeons to feed him. I’d toss the pigeon in the cage and it would perch on the snake’s tail looking around with this, “oh man, how am I gonna get out of this cage?” look on it’s little birdy face, not realizing the more immediate chilling fate awaiting it. They weren’t as likely to hurt the snake, either.
Rats do actually make great pets.
Wow, that was perhaps the most inventive food source i’ve heard about for a snake yet.
But, I guess I can’t truly recommend it, mostly due to the possibility of disease. Pigeons are notoriously disease riddled.
On the other hand it must have been a good sized snake to handle a pigeon.
Man, the things students do…
How does a snake digest feathers?
Snakes have rather storng digestive juices. They digest feathers and hair and bones and teeth.
The even more interesting question to me is; How do they know which end to swallow first? Swallowing a bird backwards would be near impossible because of the feathers.
[[Snakes have rather storng digestive juices. They digest feathers and hair and bones and teeth.
The even more interesting question to me is; How do they know which end to swallow first? Swallowing a bird backwards would be near impossible because of the feathers.]]
While this pathetic bird is sitting on this live “perch” with no idea what’s about to befall it, the snake is checking it out, weighing which end should go down first. It always picked the front end. Snakes usually do try to go for the head, whatever kind of animal.
Well, yes, I bred boas for quite some time, and I did have a few that couldn’t quite figure it out. But after they struck and coiled and crushed, and basically “lost” the head, how did they find it again? WHat scent did they home in on?