When to try live?

So the clown girl has only eaten for me once since she got here about a month and a half ago. She weighed in at 127g when I got her and is now 126 so not alarming. I was told she eats everything, F/T or live rats. She will act like she's going to strike, check it out all over, and then just carry on like she never saw it. I've been trying every 5 days when I feed my leopard girl, I haven't been handling her, and her temps and humidity are correct. The one time she ate was when I left it there in front of her hide. I came back 10 minutes later and it was gone. I've tried this again and end up having to throw the gross rat away in the morning.

Should I stick to my guns and keep wasting F/T rats or should I go check the feed store to see if they've had any rat births? So frustrating that she just won't eat. I've tried everything I can think of to get her to go for it and she won't strike. Lots of time wasted with the hairdryer and various zombie dances. I really hope it just clicks one day and she realizes she needs to eat. :rolleyes:

I have the same problem. I even had a mini clothspin clipped on the tip of the tail with fishing string, closed the tub, got out of site and wiggled the f/t rat and she would check it out but end up turning her nose at it.

Couldnt hurt to grab a live one.
I had to accept she only eats live that after throwing out 10+ rats :rolleyes:

good luck though

Another trick that works a lot with younger BPs is to stick the head of the rodent to a light bulb for a few seconds to get it considerably warmer than normal, not cooking it, and that usually gets a good response for me. She has not lost much weight at all so I would not be worried yet. If she got down below the 110 gram mark then I would worry.

As long as she's not loosing considerable weight, I guess it would come down to how many rats you want to throw away.

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Perhaps try leaving it a full 7 days and try again? Missing a few feeds won't harm her but monitor her weight and if you feel like you are uncomfortable with her weight loss perhaps you could try feeding live/pre-killed? Have you attempted braining the animal? I know it isn't for everybody but it could be the next step up in your attempt to get her to feed

I have the same problem with my BP sometimes, and one accident I found a trick that sometimes works. As I was dangling the rat in front of my BP, the rat's tail broke and it fell from the tongs to the ground in front of the BP. My guy stuck at it really hard as soon as the rat's head hit the ground. Since that "accident" I've tried this technique a few more times with success. Of course I am not talking about a big drop, the rat is about a inch or two off the floor of the the cage.

Hey!

Me and my Girlfriend were having the same issue. I actually still am having the same issue however with one of our BPs we did the following:

-Thaw in fridge over day
-Put in warm water for about 10 min to heat the core
-Blow dry to fluff up the furr
-Split the head so some juices come out
-Then bask under heat lamp or on UTH for about 10 sec
-Put in seperate contrainer, grab snake and put her/him in the container with the dead rat/mouse
-Put in either a closet that is dark and quiet or cover the container with a towel and leave alone for about 20 minutes :)

My GF BP wasn't eating at all for almost a month and now she has eaten 3 weeks in a row following this method. Just have to try everything till you find your snakes preference lol

Good Luck! :)

I would try live..Better for them to eat, than not eat what we want them to.

After a few live meals try thawed again.

Thanks guys! I'll go check out the store today. Last time I was there they only had mice babies. They have a lot of rats in a 29 gallon tank so I'm not surprised they weren't breeding when I was there last. Hopefully they have some now. If it comes down to it I guess I can get one breeding tub setup for rats. I've done a lot of reading on here about them. I was just hoping to manage to wait on that until I have my own house. Plus this semester is hellish and caring for rats is another thing to make time for. Rat babies would be fun though..

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Originally Posted by coldbloodaddict

I would try live..Better for them to eat, than not eat what we want them to.

After a few live meals try thawed again.

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Agreed

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I'd feed live. Small or hopper mice are a lot easier to find than live rat pups. Once they're feeding regularly then mix it up with frozen.

If she was feeding on rats should I stick to rats? I'd hate to fix one problem with another if she happens to then get stuck on mice. Mice would be a lot easier to get. No breeding those though, but I can't imagine they'd be too expensive to buy live.

If she isn't eating, get her whatever you can. If you can't get a rat, a mouse will be fine. If she ate rats at one point, I don't believe eating a single mouse is going to get her fixated on mice only.

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Originally Posted by Marrissa

If she was feeding on rats should I stick to rats? I'd hate to fix one problem with another if she happens to then get stuck on mice. Mice would be a lot easier to get. No breeding those though, but I can't imagine they'd be too expensive to buy live.

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Confirmed 'mousers' are actually very rare. I've had a few younger snakes that would only take mice, but once they reached an actual adult size were switched over to frozen rats with very little trouble. Most of my snakes will go back and forth between mice and rats very readily.

Okiedoke. I'm excited to see what happens. Waiting for class to get out so I can go to the store. I'll update you guys later. Thank you again!

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Originally Posted by Marrissa

If she was feeding on rats should I stick to rats? I'd hate to fix one problem with another if she happens to then get stuck on mice. Mice would be a lot easier to get. No breeding those though, but I can't imagine they'd be too expensive to buy live.

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Hey Marissa!

Generally BPs in the wild eat Gerbils however depending on where you live it may be illegal to feed gerbils to your BP. A lot of people will say that rats are better because they resemble the color of gerbils (brown vs white) however this is an opinion I believe.

Most people move to rats and ween off of mice because once your BP gets big enough you will want to feed rats instead of having to feed multiple adult mice to give your snake what it needs. I would say if you have your BP on rats, to leave her there :)

Hope that helps!

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Originally Posted by BloodStar

Hey Marissa!

Generally BPs in the wild eat Gerbils however depending on where you live it may be illegal to feed gerbils to your BP. A lot of people will say that rats are better because they resemble the color of gerbils (brown vs white) however this is an opinion

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Actually this is a misnomer. The gerbils that are found in pet shops are actually from Mongolia and are not native to Africa. There are many rodents that are native to the same area as ball pythons, one of these is the Jird. Jirds are sometimes called gerbils but they are not related to the common pet store gerbil at all.

Well went to the store and they are all out of rats. From talking to the girl there they don't breed the rats, they just get them in. They're small adults so definitely can't do that. They had a bunch of empty mouse tanks and several with nursing mothers. They couldn't sell the mothers and the biggest babies they had were weaned. They are supposed to get a shipment before closing (of adult mice and various other sizes), but I'll be back in class by then. So I bought a weaned one and she ate that. It's much too small for her but I'm just happy to see her eat. When I pulled the hide off of her I noticed she looks more triangular shaped than last week. :/ She needs to get nice and round like my other girl.

I have to say that was incredible to witness in person. I really want to breed my own feeders now. I felt bad for the little cute baby but it was so cool to see the circle of life in person. Plus it was good just to see my baby eat. I'll go back to the feed store tomorrow and pick up an adult mouse for her. She looks pretty hungry now.

Awesome glad she ate something!

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Originally Posted by Marrissa

Well went to the store and they are all out of rats. From talking to the girl there they don't breed the rats, they just get them in. They're small adults so definitely can't do that. They had a bunch of empty mouse tanks and several with nursing mothers. They couldn't sell the mothers and the biggest babies they had were weaned. They are supposed to get a shipment before closing (of adult mice and various other sizes), but I'll be back in class by then. So I bought a weaned one and she ate that. It's much too small for her but I'm just happy to see her eat. When I pulled the hide off of her I noticed she looks more triangular shaped than last week. :/ She needs to get nice and round like my other girl.

I have to say that was incredible to witness in person. I really want to breed my own feeders now. I felt bad for the little cute baby but it was so cool to see the circle of life in person. Plus it was good just to see my baby eat. I'll go back to the feed store tomorrow and pick up an adult mouse for her. She looks pretty hungry now.

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It's always nice to see them eat when they haven't eaten for a while and need a meal.

I'm glad she ate for you, the best thing about producing your own feeders is knowing you have good quality nutrition for your snakes (and they're not too much work iif it's just a few tubs).

Ah I'm so excited. I'm going to start building the tubs this week. I still have over 100 rats of various sizes in my mini freezer so I won't need that many rat babies a week.

Sometimes live will kick start them then try F/T. You may want to try a smaller meal.

I have two young rats now. One make and one female. Waiting till later in the week when the dumbos go up for sale and I'll pick up my third rat for the breeding trio. She's taken two live mice and still refuses F/T. Fine by me since now I finally have an excuse to breed rats. :D

Hey!

I have an idea for you to try, if you'd like (for f/t rats). Another forum user was having issues and I told them how I got mine to eat, with trial and error, and he had been trying for weeks to get his to eat. He said he only needed to try "my way" one time, and it worked! Maybe you will have some luck as well. :)
I'm just going to copy and paste what I wrote on another forum:

Mine wouldn't eat the first week or two, but what I ended up doing (which worked) is I thawed a rat, put it in a baggie in HOT water, left the zip open and the cup right beside the tank for 15 mins. This usually gets my BP out and hunting, if he isn't already. I would then turn out all lights but one in a back corner so I could see, and get the tweezers and grab the rat in the middle, then slowly put it in the tank (not near my BP). I would jiggle it a bit, then slowly go a bit closer to the BP. When he noticed it (so he'd be about 6" away) I would start to entice him with it. Normally that got him to come closer. I would not move the rat closer to him, but wait for him to move towards it. I kept jiggling it, kind of acting like it was alive still. It could take a few minutes sometimes, but he always struck. When he coiled, I would give it another little jiggle for 5-10 seconds after, so he would coil tighter.

Now he knows the whole routine and it really doesn't take him long at all. Usually as soon as I lift the lid after scenting he's ready to go.

I also thawed the rat in with a mouse the first couple of times. I don't know if that made a difference or not though.


You may have already done something much like this.
Anyways, if not and you do try it, I hope it helps! Or at least gives you other ideas :)

Best of luck!

Try live. Why keep throwing away money?

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Originally Posted by granitestate

Try live. Why keep throwing away money?

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She has already gone on to feed live.

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Yep I've switched to live and plan to feed my others a mix of F/T and live as I have them from my breeders (which are too young currently). Since taking two mice she is now up to 141 grams when before she was at 126. I've very excited about her starting to catch up to the weight she should of been at by now.