What about a pipette ?

Well, either I am a genius, or a barbarian...
You decide.

Never in my so many years of terraria hobby
have I encountered anybody suggesting the use of a pipette
for the calcium/vitamins-supplementation of both reptiles and amphibians.

It was always the same talk about powdering criquets,
shaking powder and criquets in some bag,
dusting, dusting, dusting...

But hey...what about a pipette ?

Pipettes/micropipettes are used for centuries,
in any area requiring precise to extremely precise handling of any substance....
Horticulture, cosmetics, cooking, and just everything scientific.

Now, I can see you powdering your criquets.
I know, we all know, that you want the maximum of the powdered calcium/vitamins
to actually get ingested by your pet animal.

Let's take the example of keeping ambystomas.

OK.
Let's say your ambystoma eats ten criquets with calcium or vitamins (or both) on it.
Some of the calcium/vitamins you powdered your criquets with will get lost into the enclosure.

Now...

Use a pipette.

(this website I'm pointing you to has no other meaning here than giving you a picture of the pipette.
Any other website/picture you'd find for pipettes is just fine as far as I'm concerned.
I think a 3ml pipette is the most suitable,
because there are pipettes for big quantities of "mixture" at a time,
like the ones used in kitchens/cooking, for sauces, etc,
as well as pipettes for extremely small -microns ?- quantities of "mixture",
like the ones used for hight-tech medical drugs and stuff)

Add your usual quantity of calcium/vitamin powder to some water
(the amount of calcium/vitamin used for ONE ambystoma),
so that you get a "pipettable" mixture.

Suck that mixture into the pipette.

"Inject" it right into the mouth of your ambystoma.

Repeat this for every ambystoma (or any other herp) you keep.

It's DONE !

NO lost calcium powder throughout the enclosure.

Most importantly :
every animal you keep gets its rightful amount of calcium/vitamin powder, directly.

No more shakings/powderings/dustings !



I can't believe I didn't think of this MUCH sooner...

:blob:

This is a viable option in some emergency cases, however, force feeding anything to a caudate should only be done by someone trained in the technique.

It is more likely the animal will be injured in the attempt, especially an axolotl.

Hi Johnny,

this is kind of the answer I expected, and with which I, of course, do agree totally.

Also, trying this method with a newly hatched caudata would bevery difficult, if at all possible, to say the least.

It was just a thought of mine, that I felt like sharing with all of you.

Although more precise, this seems a lot more difficult to me. I don't worry about the powder in the enclosure - it's mostly just calcium, which is harmless in soil. Interesting idea, but I won't be trying it.

i have used a pipette to control the feeding of brine shrimp and tubifex worms to aquatic salamanders instead of forceps. not in a force feeding manner.. just in delivering food close to an animals mouth... so I can make sure they are eating..

bewilderbeast said:

i have used a pipette to control the feeding of brine shrimp and tubifex worms to aquatic salamanders instead of forceps. not in a force feeding manner.. just in delivering food close to an animals mouth... so I can make sure they are eating..

Click to expand...

That seems just right.

And I forgot some of herp breeders use forceps.

A pipette, I believe, is less of a stress for the animal, than forceps.

And yes, either close to the mouth of the herp, or directly into it...
(Especially when the species one keeps attempts to threaten with a bite, which would make things even easier.)

:frog:

I really don´t see the pipette thing...As mentioned, to use it you would need to force feed it to the animal, which is a VERY bad option...particularly with caudates since it requires grabing them with strength.

Species that bite usually make flash bites, so i don´t know how you expect to have time to deliver the liquid into the mouth.

I´ve heard of pippettes being used with reptile, not force feeding the solution, but letting it gently drip so that the reptiles can drink it. Of course that does not work with caudates.

Forceps are not stressful in my opinion....most of my caudates associate them with food and even try to bite them...