she doesnt like her 1st try at frozen

keep positive!!! :colbert:

it will come eventually :D :rockon:

have you tried the old tricks of rubbing on
live mouse guinea pig etc or braining etc

When you try your next one. Take it out of the frezer and thaw it out on the counter and then place it in a zip lock bag and fill the sink with hot water and place the bag in there for 30 mins then pull the rat out and try to feed it off toungs. She should eat it. If the rat gets cold it most likely will not take it, so make sure its warm, leave the room and hope she eats it

Richard

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Originally Posted by stylin97

UPDATE!!

well looks like i was wrong, she DIDNT eat it... it was hidden under some of the aspen and i didnt see it so i thought she ate it.

im gonna pull it out and try another one in a few days or so and see what happens, but im pretty sure she wont eat it :(

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I'd wait a week before trying it again. The hungrier she is, the more likely she will be to take it. Good luck though, I know how frustrating it can be. I have one big female that won't eat anything but live mice. It seems like i've tried everything to get her to switch to FT. Hope it works out!

I had the same experience. Someone here told me about pre-scenting the room, and the hair dryer trick, and it worked like a charm. I just left the frozen mouse on top of the cage for a few hours to thaw, then I put it in a plastic bag and into warm water for a half hour or so. Then a quick shot with the hair dryer and poof!!!! Mouse gone.

I feed in a separate enclosure and just this alone helps out a ton... It doesnt matter if I got frozen, live, rat, mouse, chicken, cat, hamster, guinny pig, humans (these are all just me exagerating i only feed rats) ... once my snakes get in the tub it knows its feeding time and will eat anything. If you were to put your hand in there theyd without a doubt tag you... If you really wanna make the switch I reccomend feeding live in a separate container for like 3-4 feedings... let him/her get aquianted with the routine then try frozen. 7 out of my 8 will eat anything outta the tub... my 1 picky female pastel wont eat anythig but live... so i make the trip every week to the pet store for her. Good luck

I'll have to disagree with you there, Josh. This is a snake used to eating live small rats in it's home enclosure. Not only is the poster changing feeding types from live to f/t but also sizes due to not being able to get the size he wanted. So you've got two changes, I don't think a third (moving to a feeding enclosure) will help any at this point.

To the OP, don't give up. You've had one refusal, that's nothing basically and pretty much to be expected. These snakes are creatures of habit, they don't react well or quickly to changes in what they "know". First off you must make sure you are fully defrosting and heating up this prey correctly (but not cooking it). You have to get that prey to put out a heat signature close to live or the snake isn't going to see it as prey. Pre-scenting the room works well (you can simply get some smelly used rat bedding from the pet store and place it in a corner of the snake's tub an hour before feeding). Blast the prey with a hot hair dryer immediately before offering it on hemostats or tongs, grasp the prey by the loose skin between the shoulder blades and "dance" it along in a lifelike motion. Don't shove it in the snakes face, lay down a natural scent trail like a live rat would produce. Be patient, move the f/t around and that should trigger a strike. If the snake takes awhile, quickly blast the prey again to keep it putting off that heat signature. It might take a couple of weeks and some never go over to f/t but most do eventually. Remember they aren't natural scavengers so eating "dead" prey is a learned response. Feed at night when it's most natural for a snake to be watching out for prey.

Good luck. :)

Fort Myers eh :P . Most important things about feeding f/t is; prescenting, and heating the mouse up some how. Either water and a bag or a hair dryer.

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

I'll have to disagree with you there, Josh. This is a snake used to eating live small rats in it's home enclosure. Not only is the poster changing feeding types from live to f/t but also sizes due to not being able to get the size he wanted. So you've got two changes, I don't think a third (moving to a feeding enclosure) will help any at this point.

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I agree that adding more changes all at once probably won't help. However, I can see how if someone wanted to make the switch to f/t (and/or size, prey type, etc.), and had time to plan it several feedings before attempting to make a change, it might be very useful if the FIRST thing done was to switch to using a feeding enclosure (or setting up any other feeding routine that lets the snake know it is time to eat). Then, once that new routine is established, make the other change(s). While it is impossible to know what really goes on in a snake's brain, it makes sense that from the snake's point of view, if it doesn't know it is time to eat, and it sees something that is not what it is used to eating, "food" might not even cross its mind. However, if it is looking around trying to find the food it knows is coming, and finds something that doesn't quite look/smell/act like food, it might be much more likely to decide to see if it tastes any good.

I would guess it is probably exactly the same reason pre-scenting works. Pre-scenting is just another possibility for "any other feeding routine that lets the snake know it is time to eat". A big advantage with pre-scenting is that as long as the scent is one the snake recognizes as food, it will work even the first time you use it, although I bet it works even better after the snake gets used to the routine. A feeding enclosure will only get that "time to eat" response after it has been used a few times. And even if the snake doesn't immediately recognize the scent as food, maybe it gives the snake a chance to realize "hey, that smells a little bit like those tasty mice, I wonder if I can eat this thing too".

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Remember they aren't natural scavengers so eating "dead" prey is a learned response. Feed at night when it's most natural for a snake to be watching out for prey.

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I thought BPs (and most other snakes) were known to do some scavenging in the wild? Sort of like a hawk prefers to catch its own meal, but that doesn't stop them from eating roadkill sometimes.

I'm not too sure why changing size would make any difference but I could be wrong... My recommendation was to use live for a couple rounds in a feeding enclosure and then switch over to FT once its got the routine down... Just something that works for me.

Can't say I've ever read that BP's scavenge prey. Wouldn't make much sense for them to do so since they are ambush predators not active predators and dead stuff rarely walks by. :)

I think size does matter in this case LOL. I have a number of ball pythons that are very specific in their prey size and I've seen others mention this. This may be just some sort of abherrant behaviour but my point really was that changing anything can put these snakes off so I would think making the least amount of changes would be best. Sometimes the size change is the single thing that triggers them to eat but combining many different changes all at once may trigger a refusal.

The problem then becomes trying to sort out which change was the one that did it or was it a combination of things. For me, I prefer to keep things simple when I'm trying to get a snake to eat or determine why it started refusing.