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Click any photo to see a larger version. Please do not steal my photos for the purpose of advertising your own animals. All animals pictured on this page are in my collection, and owned by me. The photos were taken by me, unless otherwise labeled. I am still looking for specimens from China, Thailand, Philippines, and India. If you have something for sale, please contact me, at the link above.
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12 1/2' Male OphM-001-AD-M |
 
CB'09 Male OphM-003-09-M |
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I acquired 001 male
on 11/17/03 in a deal. A guy called me offering to sell me his
snakes cheap because he was moving, and couldn't take them with him.
He gave me a great deal, and after selling the snakes I didn't want, I
ended up with the King for free plus $50. He
was about 10' long, and
quite thin, because he would only eat Asian Rat Snakes, and his owner
couldn't find them often enough. I had a source for them,
but they were small. I thawed and fed a couple to him, and cut
the rest up into pieces, and froze them. I always pick up fresh
road kills if they aren't too mangled, and I freeze them for a few
months. I used the pieces of Asian Rat Snakes to scent the thawed
road kills. It took a lot longer to get this guy eating
American snakes, than any other King I've had. Finally, he started
taking any kind of snake, but it was still hard finding enough snakes to
keep a snake of this size on weight. It wasn't until Feb. 2008 that
he finally started taking scented thawed jumbo rats. I used a piece
of Bull Snake to scent the thawed rats, rubbing the snake skin, as well as
the innards, all over the face and head of the rats. He started
gaining weight fast when eating the rats. In Sept. 2008 he finally
started taking unscented, thawed rats. Happy days.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 03/28/09 - I got the CB'09 male from a friend. I have had 7 or 8 Kings over the years, but I've never had one that was under 6' or 7' long. I've wanted to raise one from a baby, so now is my chance. The King will not eat anything on his own. I have been force feeding him baby Corn Snakes, and he is not fighting me as hard now. 07/15/09 - He is finally eating Corn Snakes on his own, but as they are not a filling meal for his size, I am stuffing the Corns with 4 or 5 pinkies. He is eating them with no problems. 01/03/10 - The Corns are not big enough meals now so, I sewed a pre-killed small mouse to the approx. 10" long frozen thawed Corn, and he ate it right away. 01/11/01 - The last meal of 1 small mouse sewed to the Corn, was not a very big meal either, so I sewed 3 pre-killed small mice to the thawed Corn. I put it in the cage with him, turned off the light, and left the room. I came back about 5 minutes later, and I could see that he had tried to eat it tail first, but had spit it back out, and he then found the front and was eating it. I left him for 20 minutes, and when I came back he had finished eating. Very good thing. He should be eating frozen thawed mice & rats soon.
08/05/10 - Today, I stopped sewing the thawed mice to a thawed snake, and started thawing the mice wrapped in a paper towel with a 1" piece of adult Gopher Snake, so the snake scent and maybe a little blood got on the mice, during the overnight thawing. Then I set the scented mice in front of the Kings hide box, and left the room. He took these quickly. 09/09/10 - Today, I thawed the 2 medium mice without scenting them, and put them in his cage, in front of his hide and he ate them right away. So he should be good to go with unscented thawed mice from now on. 09/14/10 - Today the '09 King ate 2 medium unscented thawed mice. 09/19/10 - Today the '09 King ate 2 more medium unscented thawed mice. he is well on his way now. 11/02/10 - The '09 male has been eating 2 large unscented thawed mice every 5 - 7 days, and is now 68" long. _________________________________________________________________________________________________ Some people think Kings may not do as well on a snake-free diet. They may be right, but the only thing I've noticed is that they will become overweight if not monitored. It happened with a pair Indonesian Kings I had several years back. The male got quite fat, and I had to cut the size and frequency of his feedings, so he would lose some weight.
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Some of the information on this page was copied from the publications below. |
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WCH Clinical Toxinology Resources The University of Adelaide, Australia |
The Snakes of Thailand and Their Husbandry by Merel J. Cox |
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Handbook To The Dangerously Venomous Snakes Of Myanmar by Alan E. Leviton, George R. Zug, Jens V. Vindum, and Guinevere O.U. Wogan |
Venomous Snakes Snakes in the Terrarium by Ludwig Trutnau |
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Links below copied from the website of Wolfgang Wüster http://www.bangor.ac.uk/~bss166/Taxa/AsNaja.htm SLOWINSKI, J.B. & W. WÜSTER (2000) A new cobra (Elapidae: Naja) from Myanmar (Burma). Herpetologica, 56(2): 257-270. pdf WÜSTER, W. (1992) A century of confusion: Asiatic cobras revisited. The Vivarium, 4: 14-18. pdf WÜSTER, W. (1996) Taxonomic changes and toxinology: systematic revisions of the Asiatic cobras (Naja naja species complex). Toxicon, 34(4): 399-406. pdf WÜSTER, W. (1998) The cobras of the genus Naja in India. Hamadryad, 23(1): 15-32. pdf WÜSTER, W. & R.S. THORPE (1989) Population affinities of the Asiatic cobra (Naja naja) species complex in south-east Asia: reliability and random resampling. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 36: 391-409. pdf WÜSTER, W. & R.S. THORPE (1991) Asiatic cobras: systematics and snakebite. Experientia, 47: 205-209. pdf WÜSTER, W. & R.S. THORPE (1992) Asiatic cobras: population systematics of the Naja naja species complex (Serpentes: Elapidae) in India and Central Asia. Herpetologica, 48(1): 69-85. pdf WÜSTER, W. & R.S. THORPE (1994) Naja siamensis, a cryptic species of venomous snake revealed by mtDNA sequencing. Experientia, 50: 75-79. pdf WÜSTER, W., R.S. THORPE, M.J. COX, P. JINTAKUNE & J. NABHITABHATA (1995) Population systematics of the snake genus Naja (Reptilia: Serpentes: Elapidae) in Indochina: multivariate morphometrics and comparative mitochondrial DNA sequencing (cytochrome oxidase I). Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 8: 493-510. pdf WÜSTER, W., D.A. WARRELL, M.J. COX, P. JINTAKUNE & J. NABHITABHATA (1997) Redescription of Naja siamensis Laurenti, 1768 (Serpentes: Elapidae), a widely overlooked spitting cobra from Southeast Asia: geographic variation, medical importance and designation of a neotype. Journal of Zoology, 243: 771-788. pdf
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