What is going on?

[thedarkwolf25]

Recently Hera has been refusing food fairly frequently. She was on a 5 day feeding schedule and I moved her back to a 7 day schedule since she was starting to refuse. Well even on a 7 day schedule she still refuses almost every other meal.

She isn't that old ( I am guessing 6-8 months or so) and she is only 450g. I am worried about how little she weighs and she seems to refuse more and more frequently. Temps and humidity are fine, nothing has changed in her tank. I have no idea why she is doing this. She is currently on jumbo mice (I have yet to get her to take a rat) and I feed her F/T.

Could it be the time of year? Should I consider trying live prey? I know that she can fast for months if she wants but I worry about her refusing this much. Any ideas guys?

[SlitherinSisters]

If you are worried and want her to eat more, you can definitely try live. There's no issue with that. Some of mine won't take f/t but every now and again when I'm in a pinch I feed the f/t feeders f/t. I have no problems switching back and forth from live to f/t with the f/t feeders.

I had one at a year and a half old that would refuse every 3rd meal like clock work. I wanted to breed her and my other virgin girls in 2010 so I started tossing her an extra meal on the weeks she would eat. She ended up being my largest virgin girl.

[thedarkwolf25]

hmm ok that gives me 2 things that I can try then, I can see if she will take an extra when she does feed and I can try a live on with her. We do want to breed her in the future (we want to do some small breeding) so I want to make sure that I learn her feeding habits.

Too bad she doesn't eat like Zeus (our corn) he eats like a garbage disposal.

[TomC]

I am having a similar problem with my girl she is right around 400 grams and I wanted to make the trasition from live mice to FT rats. I figured I would transition to live rats first to make it easier. She was nailing small mice every 5 days without hesitation. When I tried to feed the first rat she was just starting the shed process and would not take it so that did not suprise me. She ate it 7 days later. 7 days after that I tried another live rat and she refused again, so I figure I will try that one next weekend again. I am feedig rats around 40-45 grams so they are the same size as the mice I was feeding and when she took the first one I figured I had it beat. With the size I am feeding I hope she starts taking them every 7 days because they are small enough every 14 days does not seem like enough.

[thedarkwolf25]

Well she ate today, we went and got a live rate for her, forgot to weigh the rat though, and after a little hesitation she took it and ate it right down. I am going to keep offering her F/T though since we have so many.

But we may switch her to live once they run out.