The Burm Has Landed!

You better not have in. If you do we are going to take your reptile keeping license away.:D Don't give in if you do you aren't doing him any favors.

He is so beautiful and cool! My little one has gone off food, but he's a wisp compared to your guy. I'm stressing out about it so I feel your pain. 'Tis the season I think!

Hang tough, he'll turn the corner soon.

Oye, another feeding failure, I waited 2 full weeks and all he had two weeks ago was one little mouse, have the rat in with him all day, reheated once or twice, brained it, even on the suggestion of one guy as a last resort scented it with some tuna water from the can, but it seems he would rather starve to death than eat a rat. How Long should I wait before giving him a mouse to keep him healthy?

I hadn't heard of scenting with tuna water before but i have heard of using chicken broth. Most boids go nuts for the scent of chicken.
I know you said you left it in all day, did you try offering at night and leaving it overnight?
Maybe give him another week and try again? If he starts dropping weight is really the only reason to be concerned. I know it's tough.

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Originally Posted by dkatz4

Oye, another feeding failure, I waited 2 full weeks and all he had two weeks ago was one little mouse, have the rat in with him all day, reheated once or twice, brained it, even on the suggestion of one guy as a last resort scented it with some tuna water from the can, but it seems he would rather starve to death than eat a rat. How Long should I wait before giving him a mouse to keep him healthy?

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Honeslty i wouldnt worry about it. I would feed him whatever he eats until you have him stable and set up and stuff. If i remember correctly, didnt you only get this snake like 2 weeks ago or so? You are trying to do too much at once. First and foremost is to get him settled in with regular consistent feedings of whatever he is willing to eat. Then you work with handling and getting him less bitey when he is a baby because a bite from a 3 foot snake hurts a lot less than a bite from a 13 foot snake lol. Then after all that, then you can work on trying to switch him.

I personally think he will switch on his own with time and once he is settled in. There is no way a 10 foot snake is going to look at a mouse like food. Thats like you looking at a tic tac and thinking its filet mignon. Once he outgrows mice, I'm sure he will be happy for a juicy rat or quail or rabbit.

Going to try an respond to both April and Sauzo here. I should have tried chicken broth, thats the more recognized trick, i just didn't happen to have any but did have a can of tuna in the pantry. Def think the next attempt will be at night, he's clearly more active, nocturnal hunters and all, though for mice he'll eat whenever.
I have thought of just giving him his mouse fix until he outgrows it, gonna have to feed 2 then 3 at a time to get any real growth thought. Problem is that my feeder guy is like an hour and half away so i usually stock up for like 3 or 4 months between trips. Although the difference in gas, about 120 miles round trip, at $1.49/ gal aver ave 28 miles/gal ; talking about $9 to $10 in gas, but he charges me $0.80/mouse and the local petco is $3, so the trip pays for itself if i get 5 or more mice assuming, of course, that my time is literally worthless, lol.
Dang-it! i thought Burms were supposed to be garbage disposals!

Should have gotten a retic lol. Caesar ate his jumbo rat, then when he was drinking, i thought it was a good time pull his feeding cardboard. Well he saw it coming and came flying over to me with mouth wide open spewing water all over lol. He was less concerned about swallowing the water and more concerned about thinking another rat was coming haha.

Lol i have no sympathy for the price of rodents lol. I pay $2.50 for mice, $10 for jumbo rats and $14 for XL guinea pigs. So i'm getting it coming and going haha.

To my mind I'm wondering if you've possibly ,unknowingly , committed the cardinal snake sin of handling ( and regularly) before getting him into a steady feeding regime .

It's the first thing I read before I got my snake and I've done it ever since .



Rule I - get the snake into a regular / settled feeding schedule BEFORE even attempting to handle any snake - at least two feeds and then a week or so after that for the first handling session .

Some probably won't agree with this especially owners of Corn and King snakes if course ..


As regards feeding - I already posted brief details of feeding in a dim light , evening time and heat mouse /rat with a hairdryer.


I had a Hypo Burm years ago and I've currently got a HD Hypo Burm .. rats are unbelievably expensive even the pups around here so I started both mine on mice and eventually moved up to XL /Jumbo ones . As I recall my standard Hypo Burm got to around 6' in the first year ( just on XL mice ) and his growth freaked the wife out and I decided to part-ex trade him for a Half Dwarf Hypo when he reached 8'+ .

Note the science papers I've seen suggest that there is virtually no difference nutritionally wise between mice and rats .

It's just more convenient to feed a big snake a rat than 4 or 5 or more jumbo mice .




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He took a rat!:carrot::carrot::carrot:

Long story short: I kept it in a bag of soil old mouse substrate overnight and all day, dropped it late and left it all night. Early in the morning I found it untouched, but just for the hell of it I reheated it with some more substrate, and instead of just leaving it I “danced“ it for him for about three or four minutes and out of nowhere he grabbed it!

Dr. Waffles, first off, I love your name sir. Secondly, I just love you.

Burms are like the best ever. I miss mine.


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