First successful assist feed

congrats on the succesful assist feed. yea sometimes babies just dont understand that they need to eat to live. lol, i usually have 1 thatll be like that. they just dont seem to understand or get the concept and you have to help them out the first few times. they usually turn out to be one of the most aggessive feeders. i had one baby female spider that i had to assist for 4 months.:mad: but now you better watch your hand when you open that tub cuz 9 times out of 10 she'll tag you in the process of going for the rat.

congratz nice to know the lil guy is eating:weirdface

Rock on Nate! Job well done:gj:
Bet you feel alot better now, i know I do when they finally gobble those little suckers up.

:D Thanks a lot for the kind responses everyone.

Yeah, I feel much better now...but i'll feel even better if he eats on his own this weekend without struggle.

Thanks again everyone :gj:

Thank you for sharing those pictures, it confirms to me that I am offering my baby ball a mouse that is way too large.

Congrats Nate. It's always a harrowing experience the first time. Now your seasones, and won't think twice next time you have a hatchling that needs a little TLC. Out of about 200 babies so far this year, I think I have only had to assist about 8. Most of them will take the second meal on thir own, but a couple will require more A/F. I had one last year that required 5 assissts before going on his own. This year the most I have had to do so far is 3. Good luck with that guy, and I hope his next feeding is unassisted. Lastly, it is up to you, but I typically give my assisst fed animals 10 days off, without introducing food, to ensure that they have gotten over the stress of being fed.

We had one last year, a CH female that just would not go on her own. We did assists, we gave her extra days to settle down after an assist, we kept occasionally trying her on live prey....nada. I really started to wonder if we were never going to get this little snake to figure out that warm thing was food!

Then one day, I have no idea why, she just got it! I popped in a small live prey item figuring it was pointless as always but hey gotta give the snake a chance here. She nailed it immediately like she'd been doing this all by herself straight out of the egg! I literally had to check the ID on her tub to make sure this was our little won't eat by herself for anything hatchling LOL.

These days as a yearling she's one of the most fierce eaters and will just about stand up on her tail and hop out of the tub if you don't get her meal in there fast enough. Who would have thought this little snake ever didn't know how to hunt for herself. :rolleyes:

Nate, congrats on your successful first attempt at assist feeding. I hope that little one gets the idea now and you don't need to do it again!

Also thanks for sharing your experience with it. And thanks to everyone else who posted their experiences in this thread. Now that we are getting very serious about breeding, I am just devouring stuff like this trying to file it away in some corner of my brain where it will hopefully pop out when I need it. I think (hope!) it will make me much less nervous when we are attempting to produce & raise our own babies!

The nice thing, Casey, is these thread will always be here to find again when you need to refer back to them using our Search or Advanced Search engines.

Also if a thread is something that really strikes you as a topic you know you'll want to refer back to time and time again, you can always add it to your BPNet personal favorites list. Just click on the link on every post/thread at the top left that says "Add Post to Favorites" and you're all set. Check your User CP and your favorites are all right there listed for you so you can easily find them again. :)