HELP! Eating backwards! Substrate stuck!

[Citrus]

My pinstripe baby is eating for the first time but the fuzzy got all bloody and the aspen is stuck to it! He can get it down because he's eating backwards! What do I do will the aspen hurt him? He's stuck on the tail/back legs.


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[DVirginiana]

Mine starts trying to eat them backwards all the time. Usually they'll give up and search around till they find the head.
A little aspen won't hurt him. If you don't like it, you can put the f/t rat on a paper plate or something next time, but it's really not dangerous (they have to eat over rocks/sticks/leaves in the wild).

[Citrus]

I panicked and assisted. Got the aspen off but that's all. I have the tail a tug and he starts really chocking it


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[Citrus]

Also he spit it a few times and seems to insist on eating the butt first. It's his first feeding so yeah I'm not sure lol


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[Sauzo]

Just let him eat it butt first if he insists on it. It wont hurt them. Usually they will drop it like DV said and find the head. As for aspen, I use a paper plate to feed mine on but she is a beast and I can pick her up and move her on the plate while she is eating. But I would just put the little rat on the plate or if its a frozen or pre killed, just use forceps and zombie dance it. I recently switched my little girl over to weaned rats and I pre kill those and just dangle them infront of her and she goes crazy and grabs it in secs.

[Enzo03]

My ball just had his first feeding and though I put his mouse over a sheet of newspaper, my buddy tried to eat it from the side toward the rear. This wasn't working out for him and eventually he ate it butt-first, but in the process of struggling with Doing It Wrong he pulled it off the newspaper and since the mouse started bleeding through its nose, its (the mouse's) nose got somewhat caked in the Eco Earth I was using for substrate.

I'm hoping he'll be fine.

[Sauzo]

He should be fine. Eco Earth is very fine as long as he isn't eating spoonfuls of it. Got to remember, in the wild their food gets all kind of stuff on it and they are fine. My snakes have eaten little bits of aspen here and there and they have been fine as well as my red tail boa eating Eco Earth as well before I dumped the stuff for other reasons and went to aspen.

[DVirginiana]

Eco earth passes through the digestive system really well (as compared to other substrates even). I use it for my pacman frog for that reason, because they regularly end up with a mouth full of substrate while trying to catch their prey.