Baby Corn Feeding Advice Needed :)

[Dianne]

Corn snakes start out quite small and eat pinky mice...even at 2 months of age, it would not be eating anything bigger than a crew (a small fuzzy) mouse-
never a hopper! .

I should have clarified size on hopper better. I’m visualizing the hoppers I’m getting for my lemon blast, which are no where near the size I get in my f/t orders. The live hoppers are the same size as the f/t fuzzies I previously ordered for my juvenile corn, which would be a good sized meal, but not huge. That’s why I also mentioned nothing much larger than the widest point of the snake.

[Craiga 01453]

I think everybody else beat me to it, but that snake is being fed meals about 3x what it should be eating.

Wait AT LEAST two weeks after a regurge before offering again, then offer weekly.

Temps aren't TOO low, but could come up a few degrees as well.

Tell your friend to do some research, cause this poor snake won't last long on the path it's on.

[pretends2bnormal]

I have a corn who is just now hitting 4 months old and took a small size fuzzy mouse (5g) for the first time this week on his new 7 day schedule (until now he's been eating 2x pinky mice @4g every 5 days or building up to that amount of food from 1g). I can't imagine him even successfully swallowing a rat pinky, much less digesting one. He's my second corn I've had since 1-1.5 months old and both grew pretty quickly as-is, but nowhere near enough to get to a rat pink by 2 months.

OP, can you give us a weight of this corn snake? Are you certain about the age?

Something seems fishy to me.. snakes can eat shockingly large meals, but this seems a bit too extreme to have been successful twice before a regurge...

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[Bogertophis]

...Temps aren't TOO low, but could come up a few degrees as well....

Actually the OP's temps. are about the only thing that sounds right...and my 5 corn snakes just voted on that...

Corn snakes are not ball pythons...they thrive with far less heat than BPs, & over-heating them is harmful. They should always have an optional warm corner of their
cage (I prefer to use UTH with a hide over it, along with at least one hide on the unheated side of cage); my ambient room temps. vary by the season from 80* in the
summer to 70* in the winter, and regardless of the season, they are most often on the cool sides of their cages, thermo-regulating & then using the UTH as needed.
They also enjoy a humid hide with damp sphagnum moss inside...on the unheated side as well.

But something seems amiss about the snake's size & age, or the prey being offered.

[Craiga 01453]

Actually the OP's temps. are about the only thing that sounds right...and my 5 corn snakes just voted on that...

Corn snakes are not ball pythons...they thrive with far less heat than BPs, & over-heating them is harmful. They should always have an optional warm corner of their
cage (I prefer to use UTH with a hide over it, along with at least one hide on the unheated side of cage); my ambient room temps. vary by the season from 80* in the
summer to 70* in the winter, and regardless of the season, they are most often on the cool sides of their cages, thermo-regulating & then using the UTH as needed.
They also enjoy a humid hide with damp sphagnum moss inside...on the unheated side as well.

But something seems amiss about the snake's size & age, or the prey being offered.

I don't think they're dangerously low, by any means, but I do feel that they could come up just a few degrees. I've gotten out of keeping corns, they just don't do it for me, but in the past I always kept them a few degrees higher than what OP posted with success.

[pretends2bnormal]

I don't think they're dangerously low, by any means, but I do feel that they could come up just a few degrees. I've gotten out of keeping corns, they just don't do it for me, but in the past I always kept them a few degrees higher than what OP posted with success.

I think their hot spot temp is fine ~85. I do aim for around 75 for cool/ambient temps, so I can see why you want to say to raise it some. Mine have shown no difference in behavior down to 72 for a week or two, so I don't think it is low enough to be an issue as long as the snake is moving to the warm end for digestion/is no sitting at 72 to digest. (Short term low temps were due to a delay by us humans swapping over to heat from A/C)

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[Bogertophis]

I think their hot spot temp is fine ~85. I do aim for around 75 for cool/ambient temps, so I can see why you want to say to raise it some. Mine have shown no difference in behavior down to 72 for a week or two, so I don't think it is low enough to be an issue as long as the snake is moving to the warm end for digestion/is no sitting at 72 to digest. (Short term low temps were due to a delay by us humans swapping over to heat from A/C)

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That's what I was getting at...72-75* ambient is fine (& so is 80* in summer) but I was concerned about raising the hot spot above 85*. They'd probably avoid it, &
not get the warmth needed.

[Craiga 01453]

I think their hot spot temp is fine ~85. I do aim for around 75 for cool/ambient temps, so I can see why you want to say to raise it some. Mine have shown no difference in behavior down to 72 for a week or two, so I don't think it is low enough to be an issue as long as the snake is moving to the warm end for digestion/is no sitting at 72 to digest. (Short term low temps were due to a delay by us humans swapping over to heat from A/C)

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That's what I was getting at...72-75* ambient is fine (& so is 80* in summer) but I was concerned about raising the hot spot above 85*. They'd probably avoid it, &
not get the warmth needed.

I agree that the warm side isn't far off. I typically shot for 87-88.

[paulh]

I love corn snakes. Partly because I found them fairly easy to breed, but they have plenty of other good qualities.

While my preference is to feed baby corns appropriate sized mice, my first corn snake was a six month old that had eaten about three mice in her entire life. She was starving herself to death until offered a pinkie rat. She grew up and bred for me on a rat diet. As I recall, she was never fed more than once in seven days, though. And my preference is to turn off the heat and let the temperature fall to room temperature at night, though that shouldn't make a huge difference.

I wonder if the OP's snake is using the hot spot. Factors like badly place hiding boxes might keep it in a cooler part of the cage. Or might the snake be somewhat dehydrated because it isn't using the water bowl properly? Or the snake might be trying to go into brumation. Hard to say what the exact problem is.

Good luck.