I got these two stunning spider possible het hypo girls in a trade at the beginning of the month and only one ate for me. Since loosing a baby a few months ago I've been super nervous about letting young animals go too long without a meal. The one girl wants to eat, but her aim was bad and after a few bad strikes she'd give up. The other girl is very nervous and had a bad shed. She let me soak her and remove most of it so i let her settle in again. I offered food twice since then and she didn't take. The baby i lost went from fine looking to skin and bones over night. Its been 5 feedings and refusals so i decided to assist feed.

Baby 12 (referred to until she gets a real name) constricted and ate as soon as i put the fuzzys head in her mouth. GO baby 12!

Baby 11, her very shy sister has barely shown interest in food. She balls up at anything. As such except for the shed incident and cage cleaning she gets no handling. I went to assist feed her and she kept spitting out the hopper. I ended up force feeding her and moving the hopper down her body manually until I was sure it was to a point she couldn't spit it out (couldn't see the tail in her mouth). After that she stopped struggling and seemed to relax a lot) Its been about 2 hours since i force fed and I'd put her back under her hide on the warm side of her tub.

I guess I'm just worried about her because I don't want to lose her. I know babies have been force fed before and lived to tell the tale and become voracious eaters, I suppose I'm looking for tales of babies needing some eating assistance and then growing up to become great eaters. And to say that even the average keeper can do this.