Hi guys, and thanks for joining me for an introduction to reptile husbandry nutrition and environmental enrichment. My name's Madonna Livingstone. I'm the head vet at the Arveterary clinics in Coatbridge, and, being a bit of a geek and a bit of a workaholic on my days off, I work for, Glasgow Vet School, lecture in exotic animal medicine surgery, and I'm also a consultant for nationwide laboratories.

So, let's crack on with the session. The learning objectives for this session are to know the basic husband requirements for the commonly head species, understand the impact that captivity has on these animals, which I think is a really, really important thing, and I think some things that we as vets are are and certainly owners are guilty of underestimating it. Know the importance of good nutrition and the current recommendations and realise the legal implications because, you know, on the 2006 Animal Welfare Act, owners are legally obliged to keep these animals in in good health and provide the five freedoms.

So key 0.5 freedoms equally apply to reptiles, as well as mammals. Husbandry is critical for health.

Everything in this animal's life is going to be completely dictated by the environment that the owner provides for them, much more so than dogs are. So lighting, the heating, the husband, sort of the humidity, the nutrition, everything in this animal's life, it's digestion, it's growth, it's immune system, it's reproductive system is completely dependent on owners' provisions. And environmental enrichment has been a bit of a buzzword for the last few years, especially in avian medicine, and, in mammals and a lot of zoos have been doing a lot of work into it, but thankfully, recently, a lot more attention has been paid to environmental enrichment for reptiles too.

So if you've joined this session, I'm going to tell you the exact husband requirements for every single species of reptiles. I am really sorry guys, but you're going to be totally disappointed because there's over 10,000 different species of reptiles in the world. And you know, it's completely impossible for me to go into, a huge amount of detail on every type of reptile that's kept in captivity.

But what I am going to provide you with is the Tools to educate owners and where to point them towards, to get more balanced and more accurate information. As we, as we mentioned earlier, they're wholly dependent on their environment for homeostasis. And we do need to be able to identify the commonlicate species because owners don't always know what they've bought off a gumtree.

And I'm sure you guys have had that, experience just as well as we. any of you that have had the misfortune of listening to me speak before will probably recognise this slide as well about the human animal bond doesn't stop with a dog or cat. It can be any type of animal.

And I am a firm believer that it doesn't matter what the species is, it doesn't matter how long it lives, it doesn't matter how much it costs. It's the human animal bond that's really important, and you know, these animals are loved and cherished just as much as any other species, and they deserve the same high level of care. So how do we start to think about what husbandry we should be providing these species?

Well, the way that I get my head around it is that where in the world has this reptile evolved to live? What sort of habitat has it evolved to live in? Because if we.

We can think about where in the world this this reptile has evolved to live, what niches evolved to to inhabit. That's gonna give us pretty good indicators to what we should be providing in captivity to maximise its welfare. But it can be difficult to know which way where to which way to turn for information, and there are a lot of different opinions on the internet, and some people are very convincing even if they're talking absolute nonsense, and I have had the experience where owners have killed their pets by following information that.

Found on a forum and I'm sure that you get just as frustrated as me that some owners seem to prove to believe the guy they met at the bus stop over the vet or over, you know, somebody that has been in the reptile hobby to a high standard, and that's kept up to date with current recommendations. And broadly speaking, there are two different types of reptile owners. You've, you've got your people, your hobbyists, your enthusiasts, they're really into, you know, the species as opposed to an individual.

They will do a lot of research to try and maximise the environment that they keep these animals in, and they. You know, they will do a lot of research into the natural history, the ethology of these species, what sort of UV light's gonna require, and these guys tend to look after the pets really, really well, therefore they rarely come to vets. OK, so we, we're not really gonna see these, these owners as as often in practise unless they're coming for a routine health screen, or it's just something genuinely weird and wonderful that's gone wrong.

But the vast majority are not owned by these people, so the vast majority are going to be pet owners and they like and love that individual. But unfortunately, because of that, they're not always going to put that same time and effort into researching their husbandry needs because for them this isn't a hobby, that it's a much beloved pet, but I tend to find that although some pet owners, I know I'm generalising, some pet owners are fantastic and will go above and beyond to provide the best quality of life for the pet, unfortunately the vast majority of them won't. And in 2018, the vet record had reported on bad husbandry, and 70% of illness in reptiles was caused by poor husbandry, and approximately 20% of deaths could be directly linked to poor husbandry.

But these are the only animals that were . Actually present it to practises guys, so realistically we have to accept that the figure's going to be much higher than this because there are plenty of people that never take that, the reptile to the vet, and they rely on information and forums and all too often you will see posts, you know, the crying their pet's death, and they've never once set foot in the veterinary clinics. The first thing that I think about and when I'm advising on husbandry is where in the in their hikes are being placed this because reptiles.

It's not hearing the same that we do, they feel the vibrations and interpret them, but people then forget if they put their varian right beside their stereo, or their, their TV with with surround sound, that some of those vibrations are can be very, very stressful for these animals. And, and that alone can actually end up causing disease. Because chronic stress causes immunosuppression, and which as veterinary professionals, we should know all too well, given the, the current, mental health crisis that we, we have ourselves.

So chronic stress causes immunosuppression and actual physical disease. And then the next thing was you decided you were. Keep these animals as vaium types.

So broadly speaking, we've got the glass variums, and the pros are that they are quite easy to clean. I certainly use glass lavariums in my, my clinic. It's hospital, variances just because of the, I feel that they are much easier to clean and sterilise or disinfect.

They can host quite high humidity animals quite safely. It depends on the types of the mesh talks can sometimes be a bit more challenging to host the higher humidity species compared to the glass tops. But overall, I would say that they're, they're quite good for that.

The Xterravis are quite well ventilated. They have a lock, and they have a high visibility, so owners like to be able to see their pets. Cons are you can't stack, so a lot of reptile people become kind of almost like addicted and they get lots of them and they like to stack the variants one on top of the other, which can cause problems in itself, and without adequate heights, the animal could feel really exposed, which is going to be very, very stressful.

Glass is not a great insulator, so heat, high levels of heat loss if possible. And as I touched on in the last slide, if you've got the mesh top, the glass varium, it can be very hard to maintain the high humidity. Certainly when I kept my water dragon, I had a very, very large, glass vivarium arboreal vivarium, but it was glass in all sites, apart from the vents, and that even then, I sometimes had difficulty maintaining high humidity.

So you get your wood, type variums, the pros are that they're well insulated, so you get minimal loss of heat, which is good for the animal and good for your electricity bill. You can stack them. Pets might feel more secure because essentially they're hidden in all bar one site.

And some, reptile owners feel in the wooden ones that it's easier to maintain humidity. Cons are, I think they can be harder to clean thoroughly because you've got little grooves in them, and the high humidity, unless you've got it very well sealed can seep into the connections in the woods just here, you see where the silicon is, and then you're you're gonna get damage in the wood and warping and ventilation can be more challenging in these types of variances. Another thing you get to think about is, well, what species are are we gonna be housing here?

Because if you've got an arboreal species like your water dragon, or a crested gecko or or healing, for example, then really we're looking at height rather than a massive amount of floor space. Whereas if we're looking at a a more terrestrial type species like your leopard geckos, then you know floor space is much more important than a high level height. But we also need to look at the size of the of the enclosures.

Now. I did a little bit of research recently to see if there'd been an updated advice on minimum enclosure sizes, and I'm I'm sad to report that there's not been an update. So the minimum enclosure size is for lizards twice length and 1 times the width.

But in my opinion, that's horrific husbandry. Tortoises, the shell should not exceed 25% of the floor space. Well.

If where I lived my room was only, you know, 4 times my my body surface, I think I'd be a bit upset by that. And snakes, they should be able to adopt a straight line posture. Again, unless you've got a zoo or you've got a full room, owners with 18 ft snakes, I've never known anybody to have a correct size of enclosure for snakes.

That although it's the minimum size recommended, I always advise that that it must be much, much, much bigger, OK. The biggest enclosure that that owner can afford is the one that they should go for. And the cast we used to be told you need to keep them as when they're young and really tiny enclosures because they get very stressed very easily with too much space.

Well, that's because people weren't keeping them, enriched and they weren't giving them enough environments, environmental enrichment and enough hides and enough things to do, cos when you think about it, if they got in, if they got stressed in the wild by being in a big open space, the species would have died out. So we've chosen our enclosure and I know I haven't mentioned tortoise tables, but I will go into that later on in the session. So we've chosen our closure and the next thing we're gonna talk about is substrates.

So substrates is a posh term for whatever we put on the floor, OK. And there are various options available and none are perfect. They usually, the usual ones that you can see commonly are sand soil or sand soil mixture, wood chips, orchid bark, shredded as and paper, rectal carpet, vermiculite, which is just a really fine gravel, span moss, for humidity boxes.

So the radiograph we've got on the right there is of a leopard gecko with a sand inaction. And that's calcium sand, and in years gone by, the advice used to be, don't keep them on the sand because you'll get impaction potentially. Whereas now we realise, well, the reason these animals get an impaction is because the husbandry isn't right and they're probably, or they do have low vitamin D3 and they've got low calcium, and they're desperately trying to increase their calcium level.

OK. For radiographic evidence of metabolic bone disease, at least 50% of the skeleton has to demineralize before you will see it on radiographs. Kelsey sand is not digestible regardless of what the manufacturers claim, guys, unfortunately this leopard gecko was too far gone by the time it presented to me and there's pressure necrosis in the bowel, so we had to euthanize it.

So what do these things look like? So if your shredded as in here, which are quite common in your snakes. This is your orchid bark, it's quite good for maintaining higher humidity.

That sponge moss is vermiculite. I quite like vermiculite for lay boxes for snakes or and and for lizards because they do like it holds a dampness quite nicely, and they do like to dig and bury. And this is your reptile carpet or your eco carpet, which I don't recommend because that's a very boring environment and be very unnatural for a reptile to walk on or slither on.

These animals when they're in the wild, when they're moving around their, their environment that they're in. Grind moves beneath them, and if that doesn't happen, if they don't have that opportunity to perform normal behaviours like burying themselves or digging, or even just walking on unstable grind, then they're not going to develop the muscles that they need properly in their feet and in their legs, as well as getting bored out their skulls. OK.

A lot of owners are moving more towards this what they call a term bioactive setup. So they've got like sand soil mixture. And they have what they call custodians, which are bugs.

She gets spring tail cultures, earthworms, and various types of wood m. I'll go back on. So the, the, the, the thought behind the bioactive setup is, and it can take at least a month for this to set up to be strong enough to maintain, an ecosystem is that you're providing more or less a closed ecosystem.

And I'll show you some examples of that of of that set up later on, but essentially you're going to have a water table with some . Gravel in it and then you're gonna have some sand in top of that, then your sand soil mixture and your bugs is you get plants planted in there, ones that are safe for the species that you're keeping so that they can forage on that. And these bugs are here to eat and digest the faeces of the animal that you keep.

And then the, the, the poo basically from the bugs helps feed the plants, OK, so it's a very, very simpleized explanation of a bioactive setup, and if it's done right and it's a lot of effort to to get it right, but if it's done right, it's really good. If you are into your reptile medicine, I strongly recommend you having a look . This paper, it's the access, it's open access, by Fran Baal.

How much UVB does my reptile need? So we used to traditionally just talk about rep UV requirement and percentages that this paper discuss is, going into Ferguson zones, which we'll touch on in a minute. But broadly speaking again, there's, well, there are two forms of UV like UV light that's required for reptiles.

There's UVA for behaviour. So reptiles, birds, and even some mammals can see into the UV spectrum, but it's the UVA spectrum that they can see into, and colours for recognition each other or even certain food items look different under UVA. So it's really important.

And a lot of owners will say to me, but Madonna, I, I've got my animal just besides, even if it's not reptiles, it's birds, I just had that this morning. But the, the cage is just beside the window and it gets sunlight, then, you know, well, actually the glass philtres out most of the UVB and at least half of the UVA. So it's very important, that there's no glass between the species and, and the bull.

So UVB is is for calcium metabolism, but it's not just for calcium metabolism. It actually helps strengthen the skin barrier, and it helps produce the beat endorphins which gives the sunlight it's good, good feel factor. The strength and the strength of the animals require varies in species, which kind of makes sense.

I mean, again, you think to where these animals have evolved from, did they evolve somewhere that has a high sun concentration, or are they a tropical delin foliage dwelling species that are going to be hiding from sun. So what Fran Baindeal had a look at was the Ferguson zones, and they based them on UVI readings. And essentially they looked at where these animals chose to bask in the wild and they gripped them whether they were shade or partial suns, full suns or midday baskers, because midday baskers are going to require the highest UV index.

But not only that, they looked at the looked at all the, all the others . Places where these animals would go to bask because they chose different areas to bask in depending on the requirements throughout the day. So not only should we be thinking about what strength the bulb is, we also need to be thinking about what distance, the bulb is from the animal because the distance affects the amount of UV.

That the animal has been exposed to, OK. I'm doing well today. I think my words are I put my wrong teeth in today.

So this table is from Bainsetal and and you can see we've got zone 123 and 4 for your Ferguson zones. So if we take zone once you get your repuscular or your shade dweller, and it's really great. I love this paper because it gives you your common species and at the end of the paper, it actually gives you a big long list of the daylight, .

Recommendations, and also what sort of substrate that these animals like to inhabit in the wild. So you go your crepuscular shade to dweller, they need a very low UVI index, and they, they show you the maximum that the Animals have ever been shown in the wild to bask under. And then they advise you where are you going to be providing a shade method, or is it something like your midday or open sun baskers, which is your uromastics.

Is that can be a sunbeam method. And I won't, I won't lie to you guys, it took me a wee while to get my head round this because I was very much a, oh, you need to give a 10%, and it needs to be X distance from your, from your reptile. But then I started to think about things after reading the paper and I was like, do you know what, actually in the wild animals will move where they are throughout the day because they like to inhabit microclimate climates.

I think it might be that a certain time of day they need a higher humidity, it might be they need more heat, it might need more shade, it might mean that they actually need some more UV, and they will choose where they inhabit or depending on what their physical requirements are. So what I do recommend is that owners try to create these microclimates and they they actually check the the heat using the heat gun and the solometer 6.5 UV index machine to, to actually read the exactly what they're .

Temperatures are and the UV index that these animals are being exposed to, cos the vast majority of owners, when you say to them, what are your temperatures, they give you exact temperatures that you know they've either made up or they've used a one-off measurement from a digital, hopefully a digital thermometer that is in place in the Bavarian, but a lot of owners have no idea what the temperatures really are. So a traditional setup is something like this. I know it's a really simplistic diagram, but hey, I'm not known for my artwork, guys, OK.

So we've got a substrate here. You always want to have a hide at the the warm end and the cold end. You've got your UV light and appropriate distance from the, the your animal.

You've got your heat here and you've got a heat gradient. And you've got your UV light. And then once I read the paper, I thought, actually, I can't believe we all got into this.

Because why are we providing a heat gradient and not a UV gradient? Because in the wild, when they're moving about, they're not actually exposed to the same level of UV light all the time. And that's basically what the, to my mind, what the Ferguson zones are about, OK?

It's, you want to be providing these animals with a heat and a UV gradient, and yes. You still have your UV bulb up here, but it'll be higher to provide that that lowest level of background UV light that the animals are exposed to in the wild, or that they choose to have it in the wild. Then you're going to have a sunbeam effect essentially here, where you've got your highest UV that it's gonna be exposed to and you've got your heat coming from the same source because it's been shown that if the skin's hot, it absorbs UV light much more efficiently and we have a gradient.

Of both, so the animal can choose which part it's going to inhabit for its requirement at that point during the day. And to me that just actually makes so much more sense. But like most things in life, it's simpler once it's pointed out.

But we also need to provide these animals opportunities to climb. And certain species like to bask at a certain angle to provide the best, exposure. So I, I often find that bearded dragons like to adopt this posture when they're basking.

And this is an example of a biact to set up here. So we've got some fine vermicular gravel down here. This is a tropical setup, and they're using sand moss on top of the sand soil mixture, which is creating a really nice high humidity area and I'm sure.

Guys that you can, you can agree with me when you look at that. I just think that's a really pretty setup. And if I was a reptile that had the high humidity requirement, I would much prefer to live somewhere like this than in a bad an environment where the owner just missed it 2 or 3 times a day.

So with with these more realistic setups, you tend to find that the the animals show less stereotypical behaviour and more normal behaviour, and they're much more active because they have many more things to do. We do want to have a hydrometer in there to measure the humidity, but again, I would rather they were measuring the humidity at all these different. Areas where you can see the providing microclimates.

OK, we've got this bearded dragon's got lots of, although this isn't about setup, looking at the substrate, it's still an enriched setup, so we do have some plants in there. We've got lots of vines, we've got wood for them to climb on, and stones for them to interact with. And they do need to have a water bowl regardless of species.

Look at that be beardy. Let me flash back. If you were a bearded dragon, which one would you prefer?

Cause I know what I would prefer. OK. This poor wee thing even looks depressed.

The owner's done some, you know, some better than than than some owners. It's, it's got a hammock to climb up under, it's adopted that kind of basking posture here, but that, that to me, that's a a fairly barren environment. It doesn't have any hides, it's gonna feel exposed on most of those sides there.

Whereas this is an active, a bioactive setup, much more interesting, we've got a leaf litter, we've got succulents, and you can see some of the, the different substrate layers there. People always thought that reptiles were incapable of play, and certainly I've, I've left many a forum, cause I was worried about getting myself put in the jail, when owners start ranting at other owners for giving their reptiles toys. Actually, some of the larger tortoises and larger lizard species have been shown in studies to actively interact with puzzle toys toys.

So here we go. Here's our Homemade puzzle toy for this monitor. And we've got the grubs here.

These just look like empty spice jars that the the owner has drilled tools and, and you can see that the lizard is actively spinning them round to drop the bugs out. So that's, that's environmental enrichment, that's foraging behaviour, and that's a hell of a lot more, engaging than providing these grubs in a bowl. Because we're minding the wild they would spend a long time foraging.

Something simple as one of these clothes hangers dryers, I think that's for socks, and the owner is dangling the food and the tortoise has to reach up and chew the food off, which is stimulating natural forages. Behaviour in the wild where they wouldn't all just be eating it off the ground, they would actually reaching up to eat off of, the forage off of the plants. So we're exercising this animal.

We're making it use its brain, and we're ensuring it takes a longer time to eat. Here's a wee video from one of my client's tortoises, and all she did was take a cat toy, stuff rocket into it, and the tortoise, quite happily. Interacted with it and she watched it over the period of half an hour.

It chased the ball all around the the tortoise table. Now I know some people saying, yeah, but it's not playing. It's trying to eat, but that's the point.

It's, it's increasing, the amount of time this animal has to eat, and that's going to stop these animals getting bored because in the wild they would spend a lot of their day foraging and in captivity they can get, all their calories within 10 minutes sitting in a boat. This snake is, is literally, it's just pegs on the board, but the snake's having to navigate through there, and you can see it's curling its body around them and that that's, that's environmental enrichment for them, that'd be like climbing a tree. It's bluetongue skink here.

Again, it's a cat toy, it's got a caterpillar in there. And it can see it, and it can smell it. And again in the wild these these preatoms wouldn't just be sitting on a bow, they would actually have to work out how to get them out of trees, and bark, the ground.

And there we go over the, the blue tongue skin there's quite happily munching on the per item there. This is another blue tongue skink, again, wicker cat toy ball. You just need to be inventive.

It's, it's not, it's not something that's going to cost the owners a lot of money. And this, this owner puts Dubai roaches in here, which we'll talk about in a wee minute, and Blueton's has to pick the ball up, shake it, chase it around the place to try and get these roaches out. This is a bearded dragon again do buy roaches, the owner is.

Feeding them into this cat puzzle ball. And yes, this is sped up slightly. And again, the environment is pretty poor, but this is a playpen by the looks of it.

But look at them go. How much more interesting is that for a bearded dragon or any species that eats insects to interact and get their food that way than just eating them from a home. And this one did crack me up, .

This is a beard dragon choosing to run. And the hamster w It was either Springwatch or autumnwatch a number of years ago, put a hamster whale in the wild in the woods, and they filmed wild voles and wild mice running in it. So the fact that these wild animals chose to actively jump into here and interact with it means that they, they must get some sort of endorphin rush out of it.

OK, the next one's even better. I suppose it's the equivalent of us running on a treadmill, that's as if you're into the gym, I've got to admit I'm not into the gym, and the, very first picture that you saw of me, was pre-COVID, pre-skinny Madonna. Not so much these days, maybe I need to build myself a big wheel and run it.

These skanks are just loving it. Mm. So we'll, we'll, we'll have a quick chat about diet because of course that's really important if we're not feeding these animals, right, then we're gonna have an issue.

So this is Fernando, he's he's a big beauty, the lad, so the gua of course free iguanas are vegetarians. And then you've got your omnivores like your blue tongue skinks and your war dragons, and your insectivores, like your leopard geckos, and then of course your carnivores, like most like your snake species. This is a Californian red side sized garter snake.

It looks like somebody just made this animal up, but it is actually a real species, and I just think it's beautiful. So most, most of the owners are gonna come to you and say that they feed the insectivorous species or the every species locusts, so they'll call them hoppers, and they vary on their names and sizes. And just as a by the by, as a defence mechanism, they drop their back legs.

The first time I fed a caught a hopper to feed a bearded dragon, I freaked out because I thought I pulled its back leg off, and then I had to give myself a mental slap because I was turning around to feed it to a bearded dragon, so it did it really matter that I pulled its back leg off. But actually the, that's, that's a defence mechanism. You've got your brown house crickets.

We do need to warn owners that these crickets, like if they escape, they will breed in the house, you know, hence the brown house crickets. Then you get the black crickets, they are silent. And again, they're, they're bred, for various different sizes, it's actually different life stages.

So that the owners can feed them appropriately because for your bugs, you really don't want to be feeding any bugs that are longer than the distance across the top of the head between the the reptile eyes to buy roaches, creepy little so and so's, but very nutritious. Get your mealworms. Actually, mealworms are quite high in fat, but, and they actually contain more fat than crickets, so they can cause obesity if they're fed to, you know, sedentary animals.

But I'm hoping if we're advising a much more naturalistic setup, because the naturalistic setup encourages natural behaviour, that's going to decrease stress. Get your mal worms, these guys can bite you. It doesn't break the skin in my experience, it just nips.

Waxworms are the snickers bars of the the reptile world. But we need to remember if we're feeding bugs to our animals, we need to be ensuring that the bugs are well fed. So wild insects have a lower fat content, generally speaking, and they've got higher caratinoids and omega 3 fatty acids than farmed insects, and most insects have an inverse calcium phosphorus ratio.

The exception I'll put and that's with lice because their exoskeleton contains 24% calcium, so they actually have quite a good calcium phosphorus ratio. Generally speaking, most of them have got an inverse one. So to ensure that we are providing nutritious food for our, our patients or for our pets, we need to be feeding these bugs.

That a diet that's high in caratinoids and high in vitamin E. And juvenile insects actually have a relatively larger gut content than the adults. So, in theory anyway, juvenile insects are gonna be able to pass on more of those vitamins via their gut contents to to the reptiles.

We need to be advising . Nutrib or or the like, it doesn't need to be neutroph, but I quite like Neutrial cause it's got it's got all your multivitamins in it too. And how often you do that depends on the, the age of the animal because in the smaller, the, the younger, faster growing animals or the reproductive females, they're gonna need 2 to 3 times a week, but your adults aren't doing much growing and they're not preproductively active, then once a week, is often fine.

Other types of foods that you're gonna buy anything that's wild foraged is gonna be much more nutritious, it's not pesticides on it and it's not taken from just beside your roads because it could be high in heavy metals. But anything that's wild forage and sturtiums that you've grown is gonna be higher nutritionally than than what you can buy in a shop, OK, but shops you can get radishes. And a squash here, collard greens, mustard greens, and broccoli.

These are all good food types, for the various species. But you can actually just grow trees yourself, and there's iguana that's self foraging here, and there are various websites available that will sell you seeds packets for, for, like tortoises mixes or safe weeds. The the owners can grow in house or in their bioactive set up or in their tortoise stable.

For the younger animals, we often recommend chopping up the food and to making this kind of that's it, they just call it a chop to make it easier for them, but for the, the older species, I prefer them to have it where they have to work at it and chew it, and break it down themselves because again that's a much more naturalistic way of feeding these species. Most tortoises are are fibrvores and vegetarians with the exception of of tropical species like your red fits and your, your cherry fits, sorry, sherrys or your your yellow foots that do require a small amount of animal protein. But most of the tortoises that we kept keep in captivity, they're gonna be fed on grass and and good quality hay, basil, and your, your various other herbs are good.

They do quite like walk it, dandelion leaves, and there's various websites available that can give you Tortoise Trust is exceptionally good at giving you a list of safe weeds that you can for advise your owners to forage for for their pets, because they should not be relying on short greens alone because they're not nutritious enough. I'm not a fan of, of the these dried pellets for tortoises, . Yeah, generally speaking, I don't think they should be fed, they're all quite high in soya or corn, and it's not something that they would normally eat, and that's also very boring for them to consume.

So snakes, your snake diet varies in size from pinkies, and a pinky's a baby baby mouse. But when I first started getting into to reptiles, I mean, I didn't get taught anything about reptiles when I was at uni, and I know a pinky was, is it, it's, it's, it's almost like they have their, their, their own different languages here. So yeah, pinkies can be nice, you can get rat pinkies as well up to to rabbits and.

Because most snakes prefer to feed on or dusk, I do advise owners feeding in low light levels. They won't feed preshett, or most will not feed pre sheet. There's, there's never any hard and fast rules when it comes to animals, is there guys, how many of us have said to people, the patient didn't read the books, that shouldn't have happened.

And with snakes you're gonna judge the prey size on the widest part of the snake, OK, so there's a a pre-killed frozen mouse pinky on the left and a rat pinky on the right. And you can see the the size variation and owners can order these and they can come directly to their house or they can pick them up from, from reptile pet shops. You get your rats as well.

You do get pre-killed guinea pigs, you get pre-killed, gerbils, you do get pre-killed rabbits too, and various other mammalian species. We don't recommend feeding like this. We don't want snakes to or captive snakes to recognise our hand as food, because then you're gonna start to get, strike feeders and a feeding response for the snakes can could bite its owner as soon as they see them.

And I also don't recommend these riot type cat litter for substrate. It's very drying. So if we any feed them, we want to feed them, it sounds a bit sick, but there you will get some species of snake you've got to make that the pre stance, you feed them head first because they find it easier to swallow it that way.

And the reason we judge the prey item size on the widest part of the snake's body is because they practically all they just articulate their jaw to eat. So if we judged on the size of the snake's head, we're definitely gonna be underfeeding this that snake. Boil pythons, and the wild would feed on gerbil coloured.

3 items, so if you've got a royal python that's that's refusing to eat, then it can be recommended to change the coat colour of the per item or go to gerbils. So we're just going to touch on some basics of some of the commonly kept species. So we've got here's a bearded dragon, I, I can see this as entry level and reptiles, they're, they're really, really nice, and they do interact well with their, their owners if they're well handled.

Originally from Australia, so we can start to think about what sort of husbandry we're gonna require for this species. They, they actually rarely bite, but they are the laboratories of the reptile worms, so that we have to ensure that we don't have obesity as an issue. And they're relatively easy to sex once they're mature.

So they are omnivorous. And we do also should, we should be realising by now that feeding live insectivorous prey does provide environmental enrichment on its own because it allows reptiles to form hunting behaviour. I tend to find that a lot of beardies wouldn't eat salads, but that's probably because they're fed tart far too many bugs.

You know, they should only be getting meat protein for the young ones 334 times a week, but for adults, a couple of times a week should be fine, but they should be getting access to . Good quality vegetation every day and salads every day, and as a rule of thumb I tell owners to feed them as many bugs as they can eat in a 10 minute period. We don't want to believe in the bugs in the Bavarian, other than obviously the custodian bugs.

We're not counting them because they're not, they're not danger to, your patients, but locusts, crickets, the, if the beardie doesn't eat them, they might eat the beardie. Your big meal, bearded dragons will quite enjoy a pinky once in a while, we again, we don't want to offer them too much, too many of these because they will end up obese because it can vary their diet for them. And they're, they're long lived animals, you know, approximately 10 years.

The hot end, you're looking at about 25 to 30 degrees C, basking spot you're gonna have higher, at 40 to 45 degrees C, and you want a nighttime drop and that's important because the vast majority of species require a nighttime drop in temperature. And sometimes if owners don't have supplementary heating at night and you live somewhere like where you get very, very cold winters, well, most of us turn our heating down during the during the night, some of us turn our heating off completely. So if you've got a species like a bearded dragon and you don't have a way of heating up the Bavarian at night.

And the ambient temperatures goes down to -6, then you're gonna have a problem. You're gonna get these animals that are chilling down and that's gonna cause immunosuppression, and then they're much more likely to succumb to a bacterial infection or parasitic infection, or actually it could be a viral infection that's been sitting there quietly in the background doing nothing, until you get this immunocompromisation. You want to provide them with a large shallow water bowl, some of them will drink from a water bowl, some of them will go and lie in the water bowl, some of them will completely ignore it.

They will, they will be in Ferguson's zone 33 to 4, so they do, sometimes bask midday. And we need to be advising the owners to change these bulbs every UV bulbs every 6 to 12 months. However, if they've bought the solometer, they can measure the UV output.

I think if we we try to encourage many more of these owners to actively be measuring and providing these microclimates, then it's just going to improve the quality of life for the pet and the quality of. Life for the owner because they're not gonna be stressed. And it is important to provide hides at both ends.

I have had experience with owners go, yeah, yeah, provide a hide, but they just hide in it all the time and that's the cold end, you know, does it have a hide at the end? No. Well then you've got shy species, you probably don't have as, as, much enrichment you should be don't have as many plants or cleaning vines that they can feel safe and hide bind.

Leopard geckos, . They're crepuscular, so they, they do bask but tend to be dawn and dusk, and they are insectivorous, but they will still drink, even though, you know, they are kind of desert species, so they should be they should or they should be provided with a bowl of water for them to drink out of. I warn owners, to care when you're handling leopard geckos because they can drop their tail if they're stressed, and a lot of gecko leopard geckos don't particularly enjoy handling in my experience unless they've been handled exceptionally frequently and young.

Their tail will regrow, guys, with leopard geckos, but it just won't be as patterned, it won't be as big as the original. Now they are banded and not spotted when they're young, and this caught me out when I was a baby vet because I thought this is a different species. But, but in my, my defence, guys, I, when I was a baby vet, we had libraries and we didn't have Google.

So, life span, these guys are really quite long lived 2025 years, and you think, well, they're so long lived, we really should be ensuring that we've got our, our husbandry right. They're Ferguson zone one, because they are crepuscular, so they're not ever getting exposed to full daylight. Remember that table that I showed you earlier, the maximum recorded UV index was 1.4.

So they should never be exposed in captivity to an index higher than that. And you can see the temperatures we've got there and again the nighttime drop in temperature. Humidity box is definitely recommended to this species, unlike the beardies, beardies is, shed in patches, leopard geckos shed a bit more like snake.

Snakes, the whole skin comes off and it should come off as a winner. Ensure the shed fully comes off the toes. I recommend Dove so with cotton buds to try and rehydrate that shed if it's stuck.

The humidity doesn't need to be something fancy. Here's age and moss in a, you know. Plastic tub that's probably had some meat in it and it's been cleaned out.

Or I love this example. This is a Tupperware dish, that the owner had cut and smoothed, the sides out so it doesn't damage itself and that's that's a really nice cheap and cheerful, humidity hide pity about the reptile carpet in the background though. Unfortunately, some things have become normalised in the reptile world, and this is one of them.

You often see leopard geckos that have had their tails, sorry, their toes amputated. By retained shed, and when you point this out to, they go, oh yeah, but that happens all everyke goes and you truly common, and they say yes it's really common, that doesn't mean it's right, because how would you feel if I put lastic bands around all your fingers and toes, cut the blood supply off and your fingers and toes fell off. And they look at you in complete shock because most of these owners have not thought about that before, since these animals feel pain.

Reptiles are vertebrates, you know, they have been, they have the anatomical and physiological pathways the same as mammals, to feel pain, OK? So we need to sometimes challenge what has been for a long time considered that an inverted comms normal way of doing things when it comes to these species. UV requirement can things be controversial to reptile owners, but it shouldn't be, you know, they've been proven that their skin absorbs UV light so much more efficiently than other animals, and they've been proven that they're not nocturnal, they're puscular.

You look at this poor beastie, you know. Jaws broken here because the muscles are stronger than its jaw bone. It's leg is broken in three different places here.

You know, it's toes have been amputated, it's got skin missing its spine's fractured, you know, and, and that, that's horrific husbandry. It really is horrific husbandry, and it's scarily common. Again, another animal here, you've got a kink in the spine, you've got a fracture here.

And his legs bent round the wrong way, and this is, this is, this is manmade condition, this is entirely preventable with correct husbandry. OK. So crested geckos, I love these wee guys, when I'm handling, look at the eyelashes, how are they?

When I'm handling them, they remind me of my childhood because you used to get these wee rubber toy lizards, and that's what they feel like they're they're totally bizarre. But they are arboreal and bear in mind that psychological stress can be something as simple as failure to provide opportunities to climb in an arboreal species. OK.

So it is, it is really important, that. The research is done. These guys are quite shy, they like hiding in foliage, they need to be provided with plenty of plants to hide in, otherwise they're going to come down, they're gonna have chronic stress and they're gonna get ill.

Hot end 25 to 28, basking spot 28, and again a nighttime drop. Whereas your bearded dragons and your leopard geckos, generally speaking are OK at room humidity, apart from obviously your humidity hides for, sheds. These guys do require a little bit higher, so we should be missing the environment daily, but if you've got a bioactive set up, it often.

It's quite good at maintaining that higher humidity. But what we do need to remember is that with Cresty, they often do, they recognise static water as a water source, so they prefer to drink droplets, which, which, you know, if you're missing daily, then you're gonna be providing it. Cures are omnivorous, but they, they, it tends to be like fruit and in the wild they would be eating nectar as well.

Insects and reassess superfoods, it's really good. So although you can make your own one cured foods, I do recommend using reassess. You feed insects for.

Times a week, but the reassess I, I'll be feeding it a small amount every day. But bear in mind if it's a hot day, hot weather, so your ambient temperature is really high, then you need to be getting rid of it more quicker, sorry, you need to be disposing it faster than every 24 hours because it's gonna be ferment and it's gonna go off. I want to point out that this animal was dead when I took this picture, I'd already euthanized it.

However, that's minimal pressure being put on the face of this crested gecko, and that's because this crest gecko's got no UV light, OK? And it should have been provided with Ferguson zone one. And you can see here the the retained shed.

This is the same individual. You can, you can see the break here, but look at its spine guys. Look at this.

That is folding fractures of the spine because the muscles are stronger than the bones. We've got broken legs as well. This poor animal, just by trying to exist and trying to walk, has got broken broken bones.

And there's no way this isn't painful, OK? And this is the result of her husbandry and her advice that was given by a pet shop, however. And I do acknowledge that there are some very good reptile pet shops out there, but as I reminded the owner, once they own that animal, it is their legal responsibility to ensure good husbandry, otherwise they are guilty of committing a criminal offence.

OK. I know I sound really brutal, and I am brutal. I'm brutally honest with people, but there are ways and means of saying things and, especially if the owners are going to go on and get another one, I will work with these owners, to improve the husbandry.

I won't lie to them, I will tell them they are responsible for this because if I, I try to be overly nice, they're going to do this again to another animal. Cresses, they like to jump as well as climb. We can sometimes lead you into false sense of security.

One minute they're sitting nestled on your hand quite nicely, next minute they're trying to be halfway across the room, and they're very prone to dropping their tail if they're stressed, and it doesn't regrowing cresses. And when my students asked me recently, why is that? Why do leopard geckos regrowing cresses doing?

And I think it's because in Leopard geckos, they've evolved to use their tail as a fat storage site. So it's quite important for them. And Cresty, it's not a fat storage site.

They use it to balance with, but that's about it. So evolutionary wise, it doesn't make much sense for them to grow it back because they, they can cope without it, whereas your leopard geckos need somewhere to store fat. So we've got an Asian water dragon, this is a juvenile one, they can grow up to about 5.5 ft snout to tail.

That's a, you know, it's a big environment you're gonna need. They're omnivorous, they're boreal, they live for about 11 years, because they live in trees. And like to jump into rivers and that kind of things they're, they're lower zone, they do sometimes bask in quite strong sunlight when they climb up to the top of the trees, but they spend most of their time in, in the foliage and these guys do need a really high humidity of at least 70%.

And they can often enjoy being handled. Here's a beautiful bioactive set up, for them. They've got we've got the hot end.

I can't see the, oh yeah, here is the, the basking setups here. So you've got your sunbeam, you've got your background, you've got a, a pond there big enough for them to fully submerge. OK, but again, we've got this nighttime drop.

Stress and especially in water dragons, they seem to be overrepresented can lead to maladaption. And usually it's because these animals because they're quite shy, have not been provided with enough places to hide, and they wear their face off. OK, they literally walk up and down, up and down because they don't recognise the glass as a barrier, and they wear their faces off.

And how stressed must you be to do this, . How many times do you need to rub your face off a bit of glass to go through skin, muscle and bone? OK.

So that these I'm I'm showing you some of these pictures to show you the consequences of them not owners not getting the husbandry right. So horse field tortoises, I'm just touching on a few of the common species that that I see in in captivity and certainly vets that I know see. So you've got horsesfield torques here.

They're also known as Russian tortoises, de tortoises, for toad tortoises. The reason they're called for toe tortoises is because they've only get 4 toes on their front feet. Bear in mind all tortoises, have, 4 toes on their back feet, so it's the front feet we're looking at.

Your Herman's torque, it's got 5 toes in its front feet, it's got horny tips its tail and a split suprachodal scoop. Now, what does a split suprascoal scoop mean? The top shells called the carapus, the bottom shell's called the plaster.

Each one of these wee . Areas here I'm circling with my mice are called skit. Super means above caudal means back end.

So basically the sket right above the tail in in Herman's has split right in the middle of it. 17% of them don't, but most of them do. And the reason it's important that you know this is because the Herman tortoises is CTs .

And it needs to come with an arent and be chipped in it's left hand. But unless you're seeing them all the time, actually, at first glance, they can look very similar. Get your surfy tortoises.

They're also known as Creek torques. Don't confuse them with spurs or you'll get a shock, and so will the owners, but I'll go into that in a quick second. They're from North Africa and Southern Europe, so you can start thinking about what sort of habitat these animals have evolved to live in.

You can see these have got really heavy. Scales on their legs because they're used to inhabiting very rough grinds and the paler species of of subspecies of sur thighs don't hibernate. This is a sparked tortoise.

This is as a baby, this is as an adult. Sparged tortoise is another name for a silkata, which is the 3rd largest line species of tortoise in the world. The good news about the Heines, the horse shield and the spur thy tortoise is the husband who died is very similar.

They're all Fergus zone threes, hot end, you can, you can read that as well as I can read it out to you guys, but again, look, we've got a nighttime drop. I advise a sand soil substrate mix is best, and a shallow water bowl, and all the species are herbivores. And I've just got a wee question marks about hibernation.

I will touch on it very briefly because owners will ask you about it. But the Tortoise Trust website, and that I direct a lot of owners to that has a large, like 26 page handout that the owners can download free of charge and see for hibernation in their tortoise. So for diets, again, do not rely on short block greens, they're not as nutritious as anything that you've grown in the wild.

We shouldn't be giving fruit to these guys and yes, in the wild if they come across it, they're going to eat it, but it's not a mainstay part of their diet and actually it can cause a gut dysbiosis. Here's a, here's a few, wild plants that are safe to feed. Wild honeysuckle.

Hermans seem to really like wild honeysuckle. Overfeeding is actually quite common in in in tortoises, and owners get really worked up about it, but again, I think it's because most tortoises are fed, a big handful of food in the one place and they're not having to work for it, and their enclosure's too small and they're quite sedentary, and we should be supplementing with Nutribe at least once. So tortoise tables I tell owners to make them rather than buy them, one of my owners said that a certain A flat pack store shall we say, has a very good bookcase, that you can turn on its back and use and you can create different environments, different substrates for them to go in.

I don't actually particularly like the shavings here, but it just gives you an idea that the animal can choose which environment it's going to inhabit. They do better with the lower humidity, so room room humidity's fine because you're, you're drying lamps can you dry it out. And you can make a real feature of them.

Actually, if you, if you, if you Google tortoise tables, you can get some really beautiful setups. But I do warn owners that it can be harder to maintain. In the temperature during the winter, the ambient temperatures, so they have to provide supplementary heating at night, and if they're gonna, if they're not hibernating their tortoise and they're keeping them in this.

And that's got to be a, a heater that does not emit light because they do need to have a dark cycle, otherwise they're gonna get stressed. So hibernation, first of all, check is a species that does hibernate, you know, we keep a lot of leopard tortoises in captivity and they should not be hibernated. I always advise that prehibernation help check, including a faecal screen because faeces faecal seems quite nice and and reptiles to give us an indication of whether they're stressed or not.

And while we're we're fasting, we need to bathe them daily. To encourage them to pass faeces, but also encourages them to take on water because during hibernation, their bladder is their water source. So, oh sorry, I've not converted this from Fahrenheit, guys.

Could be 55 °F for 2 weeks post feed, so that allows them to digest their food, but it depresses their feeding. And then the smaller tortoises, you, you only need to do it for 2 weeks fasting, but the bigger the tortoise, the longer the fast. And that's because it takes longer for them to empty their guts.

And once sleepy, put them in a fridge. Sounds bizarre, doesn't it? But this controls the, the ambient beautifully, so we want an alarm to go off if it goes below 2 degree C cos we're at risk of freezing, an alarm to go off if the temperature goes above 4 degrees C because we're at risk of waking up and fill the fridge with these water bottles.

And that's because you're gonna be full water bottles that hasten to add, because that's because you're gonna be opening these fridge doors once a week to weigh the tortoise. Because if it's lost more than 10% of its body weight, you're gonna wake it up, or if it's urinated, you're gonna wake it up. Because if it's urinated, it's lost its water source and it can become dehydrated.

And every time you open that fridge up, warm water, sorry, warm water. Let's hope warm water doesn't rush in, so warm air rushes in. And if you don't have the water there that's already chilled to keep the temperature low, then you're gonna have vastly varying temperatures in that fridge, and that's not what you want.

Most people that are hibernating do it for too long. OK, so I, I'm advising no more than 10 weeks for small tortoises and no more than 60 weeks for any larger. Post hibernation, put it in a box in the warm room for an hour and then straight under the basking lamp, you need to get this animal up, you need to get it a week.

You're gonna bathe it daily and if it's not eating in a week, it needs to go to the vet. So leopard tortoises, oh sorry, I should have said, hibernation, I, I believe with these animals because, you know, they're not, they're tame, they're not domesticated, that we should be trying to keep them the same way as they would live they've evolved to live in the wild and hibernation is a self check mechanism for so. Growth.

OK, yes, I know they've evolved to do it because of temperatures and the lack of food, but, it does slow the growth down, and that is normal for those species. So your leopard tortoises, they're from Southern Africa. So again, OK, you start to think, well, right, Southern Africa, they're grass grasslands savanna species.

What sort of husbandry are they gonna need? Well, they're gonna need quite high UV, so, Ferguson zone 3, they're, they're not gonna hibernate. They're gonna be fed on quite a coarse diet because that's how they've evolved to eat.

And again, you get a nighttime drop, but look, their nighttime drop isn't a huge amount. You know, the hot end is 28 to 32 degrees C and at night the ambient temperature should be 24 to 28. So a lot of these animals have been kept in chronically low temperatures, which means that they're often immunosuppressed over long periods of time.

I will touched briefly in red-eared and yellow eared sliders, no means, sorry, yellow belly sliders. We call them tarrapins as well. Actually in the UK they're on the invasive species list, so it's illegal to buy these now.

It's illegal to give them a. And it's illegal to allow them to breed. If owners don't want to keep these animals, they've got two options euthanies or relinquished to a rescue society.

But they are fairly long lived, so I think we should touch on how we should keep them. OK. And owners buy them when they're tiny and instead the size I'd have a tankful of them because they're quite pretty, but you can see, that, you know, the size difference.

Owners buy this wee tiny thing, it's like half the size of their palm or their hands and then end up with something bigger than a dinner plate, and it's gonna be very difficult to provide adequate space for these and that's led to a lot of people releasing them into the wild, which is of course completely illegal. So the husbandry for these two species is, is, is about the same, and she's lived for over 25 years. They are omnivores, you can be the greens, live food like bloodworm, that kind of thing, and pellets.

Actually I've, I've got to say that, the, the pellet industry has got it right for these guys, they seem to do very well on their feeder pellets and feed only what they can eat in 15 minutes. Tank size is 10 gallons for every inch of shell length, so there's gonna be very few owners that can provide adequate, tank size for these big, big animals. And the philtre of the the amount of owners that they come in and the animals got, ear abscesses because the water quality is poor because they've bought the wrong philtre or they've even been advised to buy the wrong philtre.

And that's because you need to be advising that the philtre should be rated for twice the amount of water in tank, because these guys produce so much more waste than fish do cause the philtres are are doing for fish, so you need a much higher rated philtre. They do need a submersible guarded water heater. I say guarded because they do, they will chew it and they will bite it.

And they do need a a a nighttime temperature of 22 degrees C. The basking dock should be easily reached and you want the basking site area to be about 35 degrees C and their Ferguson is 3 to 4 because they will bask out in strong daylight. You see, we've got sand here, we've got plants, aquatic plants, are safe for fish, generally speaking can be safe for these guys, and that way they can, they can eat because they are omnivorous when they're younger, they should be more carnivorous, so 70 same with the beardies, they should 70% animal protein, 30% vegetarian, and then it reverses when they're older and you can see some, some coming out here, obviously, the top of the picture's missing here, so you don't have the, the temperature, the.

Not the temperatures, what's the word I'm looking for, lights, that'll be the light. We've got plants down here, we've got various pullout sites, they do need to be able to pull themselves out to fully dry themselves off, as well as basking, it helps them with their shell health and provides, prevent algae growth if they can fully dry out. Avoid small gravel cos they're notorious for eating the small gravel.

So if you're gonna put gravel down at the bottom of it, it's got to be bigger than their heads so that they can't eat it. And again you can see we've got a philtre here, and we've got use plants, we've got pull out docking stations for them. Snakes, are mostly in shredded aspen or paper again, don't, I don't advise paper because it's poor husbandry.

We're nearly at the end, guys, hold on, you're doing well. And we we discussed how we're going to judge the size and the wisest part of snake. Younger snakes are gonna have to feed more frequently, so that's probably weekly.

Sometimes it's 10, you know, every 10 days, and basically the bigger the snake, the bigger the prey item, the longer the gap between the feedings. Pre-warm the pre items, it's amazing how many people don't think to do it and their snake isn't eating, so you defrost, the per item and then you warm it up. Don't warm it up in the microwave, guys, we do not want dead rodents going pop.

I tell people to warm them up by placing them in a sealed plastic bag and, floating it in warm water and allowing that to come up. You're trying to get it to body temperature, but you often fail to, to get that far. Corn snakes, beautiful wee snakes, easy to keep, if, if an owner, manages cause ill health to corn snake through poor husbandry, and they have really worked at it because these guys are, are virtually bulletproof, .

They spend a lot of the time in the undergrowth, so they do, although they, they should get UV light, it's much lower. So here we go. Here's another thing that we might be thinking is controversial because a lot of people don't believe that snakes need UV light, because they don't get metabolic bone disease.

Well, actually UV light is does so much. More, there's, it's, it affects behaviour. And my belief is anything that basks, anything that goes out in the sunlight isn't just looking for heat.

And, and we know that UVA is for behaviour as well, and, and it makes them, it makes us feel good. So we should, should be recommending it for sex too. So royal pythons are called ball pythons in the states, and that's because their defence mechanism, if they're scared is to roll up into a ball.

I mean how cute is that? And a little tip, guys, if you're needing to unroll a royal python to examine it, start with the tail. If you unroll the tail and go forward, you can get out the ball relatively easy.

They live for about 20 years and again with the nighttime drop, and it's so important that owners realise this. Ferguson zone 2, they do require the UV lights. Your common boa, I mean, these, these, these guys get pretty big, and bear in mind I had said that they can minimum recommended sizes the snakes should be able to adopt a straight line, and they can get up to about 13 ft.

OK. Ferguson zone 2 and they're live birthers rather than laying eggs. Got to be honest, the bows aren't as common as they used to be in my experience, but your experience could be completely different.

You've probably seen or heard of a lot of snake owners talking about rubs, and it's basically a tub that they keep the snake in and believe it or not, this is a good example of a rub because usually they are kept in they get a bad newspaper and a water hole and that's it. And I strongly recommend against these because they're far too small. The animal can't climb, it can't move about properly.

It's very sedentary. I have had, snakes that have been kept in this kind of set up and they've been struggling to get stop with respiratory disease. There was one notable example.

It took me 4 months to convince her to get a varium and I've got. Top of the respiratory disease within a few weeks, once we moved to that, because the state was moving a bit more, so the secrettions were, were getting brought up better. That's why I'm also firmly against racing systems, which is basically just trees.

It's just a load of trays and animals in there, with heat strips above between the trees to keep them warm. And, and to me it's just a form of animal hoarding. So fussy snake, how long is it?

Well, a lot of these animals have evolved to go months without eating, for various reasons. So as long as they're not losing weight, I don't tend to get bent out of shape about it, providing they're still acting normally, and I ask, I ask the nurse, you warmed the prey, you drained the prey. So even some people that make out they're really, really reptile savvy don't always recognise what brain the prey means and Fred, sorry to say it's exactly it does exactly what it says in the tin, you warm up the prey item and you stick a nail through its skull, so it releases the brain, and that increases the smell, OK?

And then you make it dance with your tongs and hopefully it'll strike feet. They're not a strike feeding snake. I do the paper bag trick.

And the paper bag trick is put the snake in and the pre item, roll the end over a couple of times so the snake can get out if it really wants, stick it in the middle of the varium so that you're not too hot or not too cold, leave overnight. So we'll do this in the evening and the vast majority of time the prey's gone in the morning. Have they changed the preytype?

Have they gone to a different supplier? It could be that the animal doesn't, the snake doesn't like that particular . Brand as it were, or if they haven't changed the preytype change the prey type, OK, I've put live in question marks because in the UK it's illegal to feed live vertebrate prey .

But I'm not naive enough to think it doesn't go on, but coming from other countries, I just want to point out that, not only is it illegal in the UK, but not only does it provide poor welfare for the vertebrate prey item, it can actually cause really poor welfare for the the intended predator, because if the snake isn't eating for, say it's ill, for example, then sometimes the snake can become the prey. And, and bear, you know, bear in mind that we are supposed to be providing these animals and with safety as well. And another way to look at the, the five freedoms in the UK is the 5 opportunities and these to thrive, and they're based on the UK 5 freedoms, instead of what to avoid, based on what to do.

So what we really should be, or what I try to do when I'm talking to owners is, you want to be Providing the opportunity for a well balanced diet, you want to be providing the opportunity for self maintenance. You want to providing the opportunity for optimal health, you want to be providing the opportunity to express species specific behaviour, and you want to provide the opportunity for choice and control. So those microclimates allow choice and lack of choice itself can cause stress in any species.

I hope you've enjoyed that. I hope it's made sense. I hope you found it informative.

If you have any questions, then feel free to email me. Take care and stay safe. Thanks for listening guys.