help with babies

[chago11]

How do you guys get your babies to eat. Have four that won't eat on their own. tried mice, rats, and asf. Any help would be apreciated

[Mike41793]

How old are they? Have they shed yet?

[chago11]

they are about a month and yes they have shed.

[Wapadi]

Well I would leave them alone for a week or so to begin with. Babies get stressed so easily. Then I would offer them something bigger than you think. In my experience most people offer prey that is too small and the babies dont go for it. Good luck!

[Sprinkles]

You can try scenting the pinks with egg yolk or chick down. If either of those don't work, check around on morelia viridis forum, there's been tons of threads lately about starting neos.

[Don]

I always feed at night and make sure the room is dark after putting the food in the tub, for the first meal. BPs are attracted to movement. So, a rat pinky doesn't always do the trick because they don't move enough. Mouse hoppers or ASF hoppers are better for starting stubborn babies. I'll leave them in there for 30 - 45 minutes. If they don't eat, take it out. Once they eat once or twice, I switch them over to f/t rat pinkies. Keep at it. Give them a few days between attempts. Sometimes it takes awhile before the feeding response kicks in. Some of my current babies took almost a month before they ate the first time. As long as the babies are not losing weight, they are fine. Patience is the greatest asset in breeding ball pythons.

[Vypyrz]

Do you have any hides or perches in their enclosures?

[Don]

Sorry, I was looking at new threads and mistook this for a ball python feeding issue. I failed to look at which sub forum I was posting in.

[Sprinkles]

Alright, finally had some time to look up some extra info. Here's a recent thread on MVF that has lots of detailed suggestions on how to coax the babies into eating and the various kinds of scenting that have been known to work. Unfortunately, there's a bit of drama among members in that thread you have to skirt around, but there's some really quality info in there given out by some of the biggest names in the chondro biz.

I hope you get those tricky little worms to eat!

[chago11]

Thanks for all the help. Hopefully they will start soon as they are probably be the only jagpondros that will be for sale this year in the US