Hatchlings refusing meal(s)

Hey all,

Recently, I've successfully hatched out my first clutch. Problem being they aren't showing any interest in a meal and it's about a week after their first shed. I had to keep them in the incubator for the first week at 89 ℉ to wait for my hatchling rack to come in the mail. For the last few days they've been acclimating to life in individual 6qt tubs. PVC material, flexwatt and regulated by herpstats (89 ℉ day and 85 ℉ night). I've tried live rat pinkies and f/t fuzzies. Not much success there. Should I resort to assisted feeding at this point?
Thanks,

Ryan

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Originally Posted by rehrlich

Hey all,

Recently, I've successfully hatched out my first clutch. Problem being they aren't showing any interest in a meal and it's about a week after their first shed. I had to keep them in the incubator for the first week at 89 ℉ to wait for my hatchling rack to come in the mail. For the last few days they've been acclimating to life in individual 6qt tubs. PVC material, flexwatt and regulated by herpstats (89 ℉ day and 85 ℉ night). I've tried live rat pinkies and f/t fuzzies. Not much success there. Should I resort to assisted feeding at this point?
Thanks,

Ryan

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Last year I had one go 7 weeks before eating for the first time. I would definitely wait longer. When you get to the seven or eight week (barring any obvious signs of major distress) then you can start looking at assisting.

Try a live mouse hopper. That seems to work on almost all BP hatchlings.

Assist feeding should be done as a last result and when everything else has failed and this decision is usually based on the overall look of the animals, it can take several weeks for an hatchling to start eating on it's own.

Here is what I used to do when starting everything on rats (I now start everything on mice now)

I would offer food 48 hours after the first shed, live rat crawler, following week live crawler again, same thing for the third meal, if by the third meal I still had refusal those animals would be offered live hopper mice.

Here are a few other thing that help

6 quarts or V18 tubs are rather small so make sure the hot side is not to hot, in my experience they do better if the hot side is no higher than 88/89.

Use aspen for bedding this allows them to bury themselves offering a sense of security.

If you keep having issues provide a 6 inches plastic flower pot saucer as an hide.

Use crumble newspaper in the tub to "junk" it up.

Use the brown paper bag trick

and most importantly do not mess with them, no handling, no checking on them 10 times a day etc.

Again a week is NOTHING

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Originally Posted by 200xth

Try a live mouse hopper. That seems to work on almost all BP hatchlings.

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This.

It's better to get them started with mouse hoppers and switch to rats later than to let them go a long time without eating. Once they are going you can try scenting F/T rat fuzzies with a mouse in the bag while they are thawing. That should help you to switch them over.

what is the brown paper bag trick?

Thanks for all of the suggestions and reassurance, everyone! Much appreciated ☺

Good advice here. Also you said you have offered live and f/t in a week. Which means you have offered food at least twice in a week already. Only offer once a week. The more you mess with them the more they stress.