New Hatchling BP - Not Eating

Hi Group -

Since my first pet-store BP proved to be such a great pet and a good eater, I recently picked up a beautiful blushing yellow/gold female from a breeder at the local reptile show - and it's been all downhill from there.

I can't get this little girl to eat and I'm getting scared. The breeder says she was hatched 5/5/2005, that she ate on 5/12, we bought her on 5/19, and we tried a FT pinky and FT fuzzy on 5/26. She expressed NO interest in either, and doing the dangle-from-forcepts-mouse-dance just scared her.

So she's running 90-92 degrees on her warm side mid 80's on her cool side, has a 14 hour day, 10 hour night light cycle, and 4 hides in her 40-gallon breeder (bigger boy moved to a Visions). We went-hands off and tried her again on the 29th she's still scared of the mouse. Tried again 6/1, again, no interest, mostly scared of the mouse.

Last night I picked up a live pinky and live fuzzy. She was more interested in the forecepts than the mice.

I put her in a small critter-keeper inside her enlosure with each mouse, and finally with both, the container was covered in a towel and the room was dark. After 40 minutes the mice were sleeping in one corner, the snake in the other. She did give the fuzzy a stern look and a serious tounge-sniffing, but no action.

I've read Adam's hatchling-feeding page until I've almost memorized it, but I'm out of ideas. I'd prefer she eat FT like the other 4 snakes in the family, but I'm most concerned that she EAT something, we'll figure out the live/ft/pk issues after I'm sure she'll survive in my care.

She's absolutely beautiful, and can fool your average reptile-show-attendee into thinking she's a pastel of some type, but I'm scared that she's never going to eat and I'm a horrible snake keeper.

I'm guessing that my first BP (petco) spoiled me by eating FK from about the 9th day in my care and being a great eater.

Any help, either here or direct to mike@payneland.com will be most appreciated.

Mike,

You have mail! ;)

-adam

Okay it's either the way you word things Mike or my warped sense of humor (or that it's 1 a.m. and I drank waaaaaaaay too much coffee) but I had to chuckle over the image of your snake and it's "stern look" at that mouse and then them both napping at opposite ends of the enclosure.

Makes one wonder if the snake was thinking "okay look you lil fuzzy bugger, I don't wanna eat you, you don't want me to eat you, so go crash over there till the Big Guy With The Forceps shows up again!"

Hope you get this sorted out though. It must be a daily worry with such a young one.


~~Joanna~~

Just wanted to drop a line with an update regarding this baby.

Adam provided some most usefull hints and I think we have her enclosure/environment nailed down correctly.

The morning after my last post we found what we thought was green pee and a small urate/solid waste combination. There was a LOT of it for such a small snake. So while cleaning the enlosure (she's on paper towel for substrate) we decided to weigh her and she was down to 39 grams from 43 when we last weighed her, so we made her a VET appointment with one of the HERP vets here in Indianapolis.

They did a fecal (came back clean). Her feces was "total diaharrea" according to the VET, which I guess, isn't very common with BP's. So they sent it out for a culture/sensivity test and have her on a course of 3 shots of Cefotaxime. One shot every 3 days. They also tube-fed her "snake formula".

The first 24 hours after the first injection she wasn't very active, but has since started to move around a bit and is very alert when we hold her while checking for feces or anything else in her enclosure.

I'd never heard of Cefotaxime until the vet gave it to me, but it's supposedly better than Baytril (the only one I've actually heard of) in snakes.

I spoke with the breeder we got her from and he says she shed and ate once before we bought her, and that's he's had no other sick snakes. He's very concerned and has offered to trade snakes with me or do whatever it takes to make it right. The vet has seen a higher-than-average number of sick hatchlings (all from a chain petstore) recently.

The current plan is:
Keep her warm
Injections on Sunday and Wednesday (very scary.. big needle, small snake)
Try to feed live prey on Thursday, if no luck, take her back to the Vet on Friday for another tube feed and to get results of culture test.

So my ever growing list of questions are:
Anyone ever have green runs in a BP?
How many times/how long can we tube feed her?
Has anyone ever used Cefotaxime on a hatchling?

good luck

My daughters ball wouldn't eat mice either just looked at it and went and hid. We gave up on the mice and tried a small rat instead, since it was a frozen one I warmed it up with a hair dryer and layed it in the tank, turned down the lights and left the room. When we came back two hrs later it was gone and Diego had a nice little rat bulge (we did it in the evening)


Good luck!