kids helping with feedings

I'm new here and have been mostly just been reading others posts. BTW I love this site. ok here is my Question we currently have 2 new BP rescues my kids 4&7 love to help with the feedings with the corns and BP's. One new rescue will only eat live, I use hemostats to restrain the head of the mouse until she has a good safe hold of it. here's the ? my 7yr old daughter is very partial to this one snake and wants to feed her with supervision of course. I don't really see a problem as my kids have been raised around snakes ect... but grannie is having a fit i guess i'm just looking for opionions fom other herpers but the kids do excellent with our herps in all regards. so your thoughts plz... thank you in advance for your time. sorry it's so long

Sincerely,
Laura-Lee Laberge& kids

There's nothing wrong with that at all, as long as you are always there to supervise.
My son got his first snake at age 6 and had his first successful hatching of eggs at 9. He's 11 now, and quite capable of cleaning the cages of his snakes and feeding them without my supervision, but I'm always available to help him, and normally in the room with him while he does it.
It's a good thing for children to learn to care for an animal under the supervision of an experienced adult. The children are the future of herpetoculture and conservation in general. They must be taught to love and respect all creatures, especially the ones like snakes that are all too often overlooked by the masses.

I'm 11 and take care of all 20 of my pets and they are all healthy and I usually have nno help except with the turtle cage as my hands are allergic to the cage and swell.

I have 3 daughters that love my snakes (balls,corns,kings). My two year old love to pet them and would hold them if allowed. My 9yo daugther loves to hold and feed and anything else she can think of with my snakes and her Anole and Gecko. My 13yo on the other hand has suddenly became to girlish to mess with snakes (unless noone is looking then she loves them again and handles them). I know you said that you are feeding the one ball in question live mice. I have a couple of finicky balls that will only eat live. I usually just put them in the cage and watch them closely. If the snake doesn't take the mouse within no more than 5 minutes I will remove the mouse and try again next feeding. I have never had a mouse so far hurt one of my snakes and I know there are many others that feed live the same way. Now I would never try that with anything but a young adult mouse. Just a little of my personal experience. I hope that it might help.

Jonathan

I have seen many kids quite capable of caring for reptiles. I hatched corn snakes at 14, and have owned reptiles since 12. I think, if the kid is responsible at all, they can take care of a reptile. Especially a hardy species.

Our granddaughter likes to help at feeding time. She is almost 3 and we just started her off recently on the feeding days. Prior to that she knew of the snakes, knew which ones to be wary of, which ones we'd allow her to hold on her lap if/when we had them out, etc etc. We felt it was a good time to introduce her to the feeding as this is part of the deal of keeping snakes. We were kind of surprised, actually, because after a little bit of time one feeding day we'd left a P.I.T.A. (pain in the..) snake a f/t rat to take when we weren't around and after about 1/2 hour our granddaughter came to us and said "He got it." very nonchalantly and was going around to all the tanks and enclosures to see how everyone was doing.

She understood quite well that the snakes have to eat and that we're just giving them their food, plain and simple.

We haven't dealt with the live feeding yet. We only have one snake that gets fed live and at times it's not a pleasant sound. But I'm sure she'll get around to learning about that as well sometime in the near future. She's already grasped the concept of death (at least for wild animals) from this past summer. Living out in the boonies gives us a chance to come across many animals and drives at dusk pretty much always give us a pretty good 'snake run'. She's grown quite fond of us coming to a screeching halt in order to avoid running over a snake or tarantula and then getting out of the car and "poke 'em in dah butt" with a snake hook or stick to get them off the road. It was just to see them at first but then after seeing one particular lifeless speckled kingsnake and going through the explanations of how it got run over....and someone didn't stop in time....and so the snake died....well then it became a quest to save lives for her!

Now...if she can just grasp the concept that we CAN'T go out and look for "frogs, 'piders, and 'nakes" because it's too cold for them outside....well, it will make these few winter months go by a little easier.

Back to the original post topic.....I think it's good to have them be interested so early on. It gets the fear out of them and they can then maybe pass that on to others they come in contact with before their minds get filled with Snakes are bad! Snakes are dangerous! Snakes are big killers!

I say hey, have them help hold them..but also have them help clean cages, feed, and everything else that goes with keeping them and caring for them. Just don't make it a "see how cool that is..!...he's killing that mouse..!..look at the eyes popping out! isn't that cool, little joey?" and for pete's sake....don't hold your newborn in your arm as you feed a viscious alligator while there are hundreds of people around and tv cameras and eyewitnesses out the yin-yang (ying-yang?)...

....wait until they're gone and THEN do it!

*goes to the Fauna moneypot and drops in a nickel before taking out three pennies*

There is the future big name in reptiles right there.
Very cool seeing such a young one understanding the basics of reptiles and what not. I bet she could care for a reptile better than half the clowns out there...

Letting your kids help you lets them feel a sense of being important. My daughter suprises me all the time at the words she will throw out, like today she was talking abou thermoregulation and she is 8.. I guess they pick up on Dad on the phone 4 hours a day talking herps...She also watches the snakes behaviors and knows which one sin myu collection are nippy and which ones are ok with being handled...