First feeding attempt... refused

I want to thank everyone for all your responses. I'll try to answer everything, but for those who'd rather not read a long post, just know that we think she ate tonight! :)

We got her at MARS. The breeder did not have records of exact hatch date, or how many times she had eaten. He did tell us that she had been eating live hopper mice, and her most recent meal was Tuesday before she show, which would have been 9/11. I was slightly concerned about this, but she seemed very healthy. Also someone at a different table had recommended we ask this person when we told them we were looking for a normal female baby since they didn't have any. After we got home, I searched and found some info on the person we bought from, and it all was positive and went back a few years. So the records may have been lacking, but I think over all the person we brought from counts as one of the good guys.

When we first brought her home, we had a little more difficulty getting the temps stabilized than I had anticipated. She is in a 20 gallon tank. We had tried to set it up in advance, but it turned out we didn't have good enough equipment and we could either get temps very stable but very cold at 80 warm and 70 cool, or we could add an obviously insanely overpowered for this purpose heat lamp that raised temps to above 100 very quickly and who knows how high it would have gone if we'd left it to stabilize. So we bought more/better stuff while we were at the show, but it still took a few days of tweaking to get everything right, and it still isn't perfect. Starting a few days after she was home, I had things pretty on target 90/80, but with more fluctuations throughout the day than I'd prefer. The cool side ranges from about 79 to about 81, and the hot side ranges from about 85 to about 91, but the big drops on the warm side seem to be only when I open up the top; I think the overnight lows on the warm side are more like 87. I know the fluctuations will only get worse as the weather gets colder, so we are planning on getting a t-stat. Right now we are using a rheostat to regulate it.

Humidity hasn't been much of an issue at all since we have a sheet of styrofoam like stuff covering most of the top to keep the heat in. It varies between 45% and 55%, but like with the heat, the drops are when I open the top so I think the real range is between 50-55%.

She has 3 hides. The ones on the warm side and the cool side are identical. Those 2 are upsidedown black disposable food storage things like some restaurants give for takeout orders, with a hole cut out for an entrance. We are also using one of those double cat food/water dishes for her water, which has holes so she can get under it if she likes. The water is in the middle of the tank, and since it is sort of long, I figure she has something of a temp gradient just by moving from one end to the other. She goes under all 3 of them, so I believe she is thermoregulating herself ok. Her favorite place is the cool side hide.

We have not handled her since we purchased her, other than extremely minimal and necessary amounts such as one time when I was changing her water and she decided to make a break for it while the cage was open, so I lifted her back down inside. I open her tank up once or twice a day to clean the water and reset the min/max data on the acu-rite. It was more often the first few days when I was trying to get the temps stabilized and I was moving the probe around to try to be sure I knew exactly what was going on temp wise.

We offered the f/t hopper on 9/21; 10 days since she'd eaten, 6 days since she was home with us, but only about 3 days since her temps were pretty stable. I thawed it inside a plastic baggie in a cup of warm water. When I was sure it was totally thawed, I changed out the water to make sure it was still quite warm, and put it beside her tank with the baggie open to start pre-scenting. If I remember correctly, she was already roaming around her tank at this point. We had purposely planned this for the evening when she typically came out. After about 20 minutes of pre-scenting and her roaming around, I opened up her tank and offered the mouse with feeding tongs. It was hard to be sure if she was just doing her typical roaming thing, or looking for the food that she smelled. She came near the mouse several times, but if I didn't move it, she didn't seem to focus in on it. When I did try to wiggle it a little bit, it seemed to scare her. So I put the mouse back in the baggie in a fresh cup of warm water to make sure it was still warm enough, then just set it on the floor of her cage and left her alone for a while. When it was still there, I decided to try to make the mouse a little hotter and put it under that overpowered heat lamp for a few. I tried offering it with the tongs again and one time I thought she was going to strike at it but she never did. So I warmed it under the heat lamp again, and left it in her tank while I went and watched TV for an hour. At that point, I decided that I'd tried as much as I could, so I removed the mouse and gave up for the day. I guess that is when I posted my question.

The next day I read the first few replies and we decided to go ahead and try a live hopper that evening. We put it next to her cage to try to prescent for a while and then dropped it in. Again she was already out roaming around. She nearly collided with it a few times, but just didn't seem like she was interested in eating it. I didn't want to leave it in there unattended, so I took it out and set up a cage for it with something to hide under and some tissues for bedding, and food and water, although I'm not sure it was old enough to actually take care of itself. I hoped I could get it to survive several days at least so I could offer it to our snake again, partly because I just didn't want the money wasted but also while I'm ok with feeding mice to the snake, I would feel bad about a baby mouse slowly dying for no reason.

Although no one suggested it on this thread, on some other threads I had read about using the balls of crumpled newspaper to fill in some empty space and make the snake feel more secure. I decided to try this. There is a down side that no one mentioned. It makes pockets of air that get little circulation so they either get hot or stay cold depending on their location in regards to the heat. After adding the newspaper, the next time I peeked in, the probe temp was reading 97! Yikes. I took some of the newspaper back out of the warm side to try to trap less heat, and opened up the top a little bit more. This brought the temp back down to something more reasonable, although still a little higher than it was before I added the newspaper. The newspapers get rearranged a little bit every time the snake goes roaming, and I'm getting more fluctuations in temps than I was before I added the newspaper. I assume this is because how much warm or cool air gets to the probe or the unit is changing as the newspapers get moved. I'm not seeing anything above 95 or below 77, so it shouldn't be harmful to her. Also I believe the temps inside the hides are affected less since they were already pockets of air without a lot of circulation. So I'm hoping that the negative of the greater range in temps doesn't outweigh the positive of feeling less out in the open.

Today I started to get worried that the mouse was getting weaker. I even posted a question on the feeder forum about how to take care of it. In the end, I decided to offer it to the snake again tonight. I decided this little mouse was not big enough nor strong enough to do any harm, plus it had had food available to it, so it either wasn't hungry or couldn't eat by itself, so there was no chance of it deciding to start nibbling on my snake. At least I hoped not. My intention was to leave it in there for an hour while watching TV so it would be nice and quiet in the room the snake is in, so I didn't even bother with pre-scenting since the first part of the hour could count as that if necessary. This time the snake was in her hide, and I dropped the little mouse right in front of the hide entrance. The mouse moved away and hid under one of the newspaper balls immediately. Almost as fast, the snake poked her head out from under the hide. I decided to wait a moment and watch, and I'm glad I did. The snake slowly crept out of her hide in the same direction the mouse had gone, her tongue flicking. Her head disappeared under the newspaper, but I saw her body bunch up and heard the fast rustle of the strike. I was able to see most of the constricting, because when she rolled herself up to constrict it, it lifted up the newspaper. However, when she eventually unrolled, I couldn't see any part of her head or the mouse. After a few minutes, she backed back into her hide. She never even came all the way out.

When she backed up into the hide, I wasn't able to see an obvious bulge from the food. I almost opened up the cage again to see if the mouse had been left under the newspaper, but thought better of it, and went off to watch my TV show. When I came back, the hide and the newspapers had all been moved around a bit. I lifted a couple of the newspaper balls that were closest to where the strike occurred, and didn't see the mouse. It is still possible it is in there somewhere, but I know it is dead and I'm pretty sure she ate it, so I am just going to leave things alone.

So, yay! She ate! And I even got to see a little bit of it happening under the newspaper. Whoever thought up the idea of putting in the crumpled up newspaper to make a snake feel more secure can add one more victory! 12 days since she'd last eaten, 8 days since we brought her home, and about 5 days since her temps were mostly stable. Hmmmm. Maybe there's a reason everyone around here says to let them settle in for 5 days or so? :)

Sound like she just needed to feel a bit less exposed to nail her dinner. That newspaper trick is an amazing one. Remember to leave that paper in for awhile until she's eating regularily (I know it can be a pain and isn't nice to look at but it really does work). Once she's eating weekly just slowly remove a bit of it each week until it's gone. We have a hatchling boa we are snake sitting that won't strike until I cover her enclosure with a navy blue pillowcase....some snakes are just like that LOL.

Congrats! I'm glad to hear she ate for you.

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Originally Posted by kc261

We've had our baby BP for 6 days now, and tried to feed her for our first time tonight. She didn't eat. :( I think her refusal has launched me into overworried new mom mode.

The breeder we got her from said she had been eating live hopper mice so far. We wanted to feed f/t, so we got some frozen hopper mice. Should we have given her live food since that was what she was used to until we knew she was settled in to her new home enough to eat? Or is it ok to go ahead and try to get her to switch to f/t right away?

The breeder told us she was about 6 weeks old. How long can a young BP safely go without eating?

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Well i really cant tell you anymore than they have already told you but what i did with anakiya was put the hopper in a seperate 10 gallon tank and held her over the top until she seen it moving around and if she is hungary she will slide on in and attack! :sabduel: :sabduel: try it out and see if it works but i would wait a few days before trying again. :colbert:

We initially tried to feed thawed frozen pinkies to our snake and he would not even recognize them, despite being brought up to a reasonable temperature. We tried this twice in a week and then I took him back to the store where I got him and asked for a feeding demonstration. The guy dropped a fuzzy in the shoe box and our snake struck in under two seconds and was done eating in ten minutes. Since then I've only fed him live fuzzies every 7-14 days and the process has been identical. I want to switch to pre-killing the mice, especially when I switch him to the next size up (hoppers, which are obviously more capable of doing harm). Hopefully, since he doesn't even give them a chance to move, he won't notice they're dead.