Saving Snakes

Category: 6. Elapidae - COBRAS and MAMBAS | Date: Nov 24 2007 | By: admin

Yesterday we noticed that one of our Black Mambas Dendroaspis polylepis was still sick. It has been sick for a few days now. It developed an infection in the mouth associated with Mouth Rot (Necrotic stomatitis). The Bio-Ken team removed it from its cage and Sanda Ashe, my fellow Director, gave it a Oxytetracycline injection, about 0.5 ml sub-cutaneously. The mamba was returned to its cage and is looking much better this morning.

Bio-Ken holds about 46 Black Mambas in its milking program. The snakes are milked every three weeks and the venom is dessicated and stored. The Venom is then moved on to make antivenom and is also used in medical research both of which end up saving peoples lives. The method of keeping the Mamba’s at Bio-Ken was instigated by the late James Ashe who founded Bio-Ken in 1980. The system has been improved over the years and our oldest Mamba’s have been with us for about 18 years now.

Mambas are difficult to keep in captivity as they are very nervous and especially Black Mambas, some never settle down. About 3 in every 5 collected are like this so we release the Mambas that don’t settle after six weeks of trying. Of coarse a snake in the wild is better than in a cage, but antivenom is a necessity and almost all the snakes are collected from where they are causing a problem. If we did not remove these snakes they would certainly be killed.

Photo by Wolfgang Wuster

Photo by Royjan Taylor

It would be good to note that availability of good Antivenom and information on treatment can be obtained through ” The James Ashe Antivenom Trust” commonly known as JAAT.

Technorati : Black Mamba, Dendroaspis polylepis