Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Introducing the Rhino Ball!

 Well, not really. 

I wanted to touch on the fact that Krystal brought up about nose rubbing and "pacing" in males.

This is something that you really can't avoid if you have no intentions of breeding the male.

The best you can do is keep the males away from each other, or away from other females. But in all honesty, I have not seen anything really work persay... 

It's just a fact of the breeding season. You can try and move things around in the tub, change it up a bit, clean up the room and such, but overall, boys will be boys, and they are out to get some. 

But I wanted to say, it's not just the boys. "Pacing" happens for both genders, mostly when excited, stressed out, or hungry. 

This female is my girl Rhino. 

Do you see why?


 Yes, she has a bad nose bump. She was housed in a Vision rack, and the holes that are on the tops of the tub setup, this female decided to force her face thru.

She didn't get far at all, but managed to create a keloid scar of sorts, wherein her nose has a full bump of tissue that although disfiguring, is not harmful, nor causes pain when touched. 

It's not pretty, and to be honest, she looks a bit ugly, but in a endearing sort of way. She is a part of the colony, and she is very much a stand out kinda animal. You will not forget which Albino she is... 

I have not taken her to a vet, as this issue is a cosmetic one to say the least, but I'm sure she can be "fixed" so to speak. 

But why should I? I think its kinda cute. 

For the record, she has stopped trying to push out of the tub for a while now... but the evidence still remains.


So there you go. You can change things up, you can see if you can calm them down if you think it is a husbandry issue, but bottom line is, there is no real "fix" to "pacing".

Have a fantastic day, my friends.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks, Heather!

    On the bright side, the males don't seem to be hurting themselves; they just scare the crap out of me when they pop off the clips holding their tub lids down.

    The one female who had the bad nose rub (same place as your Albino) got moved to a 50-gallon beardie tank (the beardies are brumating elsewhere), and the rub seems to be healing fine.

    Maybe someday, when I have a separate snake room, I can keep pacing males in a different room (since hopefully, I won't have too many of non-breeding males at any given time).

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  2. hey heather its kyle hoffman i had a female with that same issue she developed a big ball of scar tissue and it dried up and came off she had like a hollow spot in her nose but it eventually healed up. good luck with her.

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