What are some variables you may have changed for your finicky eaters?

I got my first BP at the beginning of June this year. She has still not eaten for me which is frustrating, but not a super serious concern when considering all the other owners that have been through this same experience. I am wondering though, what variables might you have changed that got your BP to start eating if you were experiencing something similar? Did it just take time? Or maybe changes with the time of feeding, the light in the room? My temps/humidity are on point other than it getting a little cold in my room at night. I have considered feeding her live (she is on rat pups at the moment) to hopefully get something in her, but I fear this would be very counter intuitive in the grand scheme of switching her to F/T. Any thoughts would be appreciated, thanks!

It could be one or a combination of factors. What was she feeding on before? What type of bedding was she on? Does she have a hide? How old is she? If she's not losing any weight it may be just a matter of waiting it out. I had one of my adult female pieds not eat for 6 months. She weighed 3800 grams when I got her so not a big concern. She had been eating great prior to me getting her. I still bred her and got a great first clutch from her of 8 eggs. I got her cleaned up and the day after laying she ate a small live rat. A few days later another and she is now eating everything insight. I feed all my snakes live and just happened to have some frozen rats which she also eats. So it could just take time and patience. Check with the breeder and try to mirror what they set up. Good luck

Mike

She was feeding on rat pups prior to me getting her, the breeder did not specify if they were live or not but I've been assuming they were live. He also said she was on aspen previously and I have her on reptibark at the moment. She has two hides, on the warm and cool sides and is about 8 months old, roughly 160 grams last time I weighed her. Whenever she smells rat she comes out and is very curious, but once I bring the rat in the enclosure she doesn't pursue it and eventually ends up striking the rat as if it is a threat.

Gotcha, so there does seem to be some changes in her environment. I recently sold a yearling to a guy. She was a great feeder for me. She was raised on sani chips with me. He put her on 3 different substrates before moving her to sani chips. She ate within 2 days after the switch. She's eaten ever since. You could consider feeding her in another tub with aspen in it and see if it helps.

Mike

Wow that's very interesting, just the type of odd variable change that I was speaking of. I'll definitely give it a try! Thanks Mike

No problem at all. It can get pretty annoying when they don't eat. Its great when they turn on, put on weight and drop nice, big, perfect all pied clutches though. That was a nice payoff for my patience. By the way, what BP did you get?

If she was fed live, this is most likely the reason. A month is a long time to acclimate to new substrate and in my experience, this is definitely something that wont stop her from eating. I have bought snakes who were on newspaper and at the time I used news paper and they still wouldn't eat. I have now moved all my snakes (some of them I have had on news paper for two years) and all of them eat just fine. Only four eat F/T but live is cheaper for me, so I feed mostly live to the rest of my snakes.

If you want to try changing substrate, that is your choice but I really think that if she was fed on live, this is most likely the reason she is not eating your F/T offerings.

If this is the case what would be your best suggestion on switching her over to F/T? Until now I've just been waiting it out and figuring that she will eat once she's hungry enough. I assume once she learns that the F/T offerings are food she will start eating them up.

I ended up getting a nice Kingpin. Also nice considering I'm looking at producing BELs in the future.

Well, 160g for a 8 month old is a little small IMO so either she is a horrible eater to begin with or she was less since she was a "seller".

Switching over to F/T is something I have only done with 1-4 month old snakes... anything that has been fed over that seems impossible. I have a few snakes that will not take F/T not matter what I do. The best way to get a snake to take F/T is to just keep offering it. But at one point you have to draw the line and that choice is up to you. If feeding live is something that really bothers you, you may have to give up the female if she continues to refuse F/T.

Nice snake, I hope she switches for you. She does seem a little on the small side. I'd see if she takes the live and at least get her some nutrition.

I don't know if it'll make a difference now if you are switching to live feed, but my 2 cents on what helped to get my picky eater eating again was to blast some warm air onto the f/t mouse/rat and Louie has eaten every single item offered to her since! She skipped three feedings before I tried using a space heater (I don't have a hair blow dryer :P) and now he eats every time!! Hope this helps in the slightest bit possible!! Good luck! xx

Feed her live for now.

At 160g her getting food she will eat is more important than your desire to feed her FT someday.

People have misconstrued the "BP's go off food all the time" thing. It's fine for adults and near adults to go long periods without food, but hatchlings and juveniles (particularly small ones) need to eat, and that means feeding them what they are willing to eat, not trying to force them to eat what you want them to eat.

one little bit of advice that was a godsend to me and I have used to get my girl to eat every time without fail is a hot water bath of prey before feeds:

I fully thaw rat in room temp water for a few hours
5 minutes before feeding I run the hot tap and get it as hot as it will go (it won't be boiling!) and replace the rat water with fresh hot water
I leave it in the bath for 5 minutes right next to the tank
I get it out of the bath and give it a light dab off so it's not dripping wet
I sneak it into the tank and if I blink I miss the strike

This got my girl out of a three month refusal and she's never missed a feed since. Might be worth giving it a go especially as you're trying to get off of live feed. IMO warming up with a hairdryer is still going to leave that prey colder than a live mouse

The hot water bath does help, if you're still trying F/T prey- depending on how picky the BP is. I just heated a bowl of water (not boiling, but actually rather hot to the touch!), stuck the prey in a ziploc bag, put the bag in the water... for about 1 minute. Take out the prey and immediately serve.

I've seen some BP's dislike wet prey, but some BP's respond better to wet AND hot prey... So you can try either and see which one works. In terms of wet and hot, just dunk the prey in the hot water directly without putting it in the ziploc bag.

You can ALSO try asking for mouse aspen from the pet store (like.. aspen with mouse poop and scent in it), and roll the F/T rat around in the mouse aspen. In my experience, snakes just find mice about x1000 more delicious than rats- it helped start my female back on eating again after her random hunger strike.

And actually, the hot water trick worked for me a couple times- but then my male BP decided that he didn't like that anymore either. :\ He was also on live feeding with his breeder, before they shipped him to me. I've since switched him to live since he ABSOLUTELY refused to eat F/T, and he eats the live prey before it even hits the ground.

I have a female that was 560g and a live feeder when I got her, where I live, feeding live isn't an option as they are hard to get unless you breed your own so I only feed F/T, she didn't eat for just over 3 months but now I've got her switched she takes f/t with a bit of encouragement, offering her for 10-15min is usually what it takes, I dip the head in hot water for 20-30sec before offering and it usually gives me a pretty good response,

My advice would be to try her with live until she has some decent weight on her and then try switching her to frozen

You might try a mouse. Mine will never refuse a mouse, but rats always go to waste! Also, when my boy wouldn't eat, I tried feeding him later at night (around 10 or 11pm), and I blow dryed his food.
Also, I "scent" the room, so by the time the mice are thawed they're already out looking around for food.