Snakes eating without striking frozen thawed prey

I have one female that to offer her food to the point she strikes, is to guarantee she will not eat. However, if I just lay the FT prey in the tub and leave her alone, she eats every time.

So, I have a retic that would literally eat everyday if u let him. My baby female retic will strike the f/t and coil but won’t eat it for some reason, it’s driving me nuts honestly!! I fed her a live rat fuzzy this week and she ate but am not wanting to feed live to her. My female burm never strikes I just lay the f/t rat in her enclosure and she will just eat it as it lays.

I think that most of my snakes have been too lazy to strike and coil before. But then they usually revert back to attack mode on the next feeding.

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Etta, Coastal Carpet

Funny you bring this back up because thunder my cinnamon banana royal is the weirdest eater and it takes him sometimes hours to take his prey. He literally watches it moves all around it. It’s like he wants or needs me to go to sleep before he will eat. I usually feed him late too. Last night it had to be a solid 2 hrs. I take so long to properly prep it and he just has to like examine and take his time. I’ve yet to see him eat once but it’s akways gone so.

When I only had a few dozen ball pythons and fed f/t I would make a note on the cage cards preferred method of feeding: Dangle vs. Drop.
Any Drop feeders would get 30 minutes after I left the room to make an effort to consume the prey - after that, I would come back and the food item was removed and fed to another snake.

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Originally Posted by Phillydubs

Funny you bring this back up because thunder my cinnamon banana royal is the weirdest eater and it takes him sometimes hours to take his prey. He literally watches it moves all around it. It’s like he wants or needs me to go to sleep before he will eat. I usually feed him late too. Last night it had to be a solid 2 hrs. I take so long to properly prep it and he just has to like examine and take his time. I’ve yet to see him eat once but it’s akways gone so.

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At times all of my snakes have had this behavior after the strike and coil, but not for 2 hrs, wow. It’s like they are guarding the rat and can’t decide if they want to eat it now or later. They usually chow it down within 20-30 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Reinz

At times all of my snakes have had this behavior after the strike and coil, but not for 2 hrs, wow. It’s like they are guarding the rat and can’t decide if they want to eat it now or later. They usually chow it down within 20-30 minutes.

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Crazy right ??

I guess they all have their own way of doing things as long as he’s eating I could really care less what he does with it but I just find it very surprising because I have to imagine that it’s not super warm at that point I mean I do like it under the heat area but it’s also not moving or mimicking a live animal as well. But something also tells me my guy would be freaked out if he saw anything moving in his cage he is like neurotic almost. Heck for all I know once I go to sleep you could drag it into his height and have a table with a white tablecloth and a fork and knife in there


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Lucy varies as well. Sometimes I have to leave the rat in the tank, sometimes she will just come up and yank it out of the tongs, sometimes she will pull back and then strike. I don't know what she does when I leave the rat as I just let her be. If she takes it right away though she always coils.

I have a fun post about her trying to eat while in blue. Watching her gnaw on that rat's, ahem, nethers was priceless.

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