What kinds of tricks do you use to feed picky eaters?

[BPZ]

So you all know ball pythons are sometimes on the picky side when it comes
down to feeding. I want to know what are your tricks to trigger your ball python's
feeding response? Here are the following that I have heard of:

* Pre-scenting the room for half an hour - hour [8 Ball Pythons Video]

* "Box feeding" putting the snake in a small box with dead rodent [BHB Enterprise Video]

* Live feeding (Self-explanatory) [BHB Enterprise Video]

* Splitting or cutting open the rodent's head [BHB Enterprise Video]

* Tuna scenting the rodent [BHB Enterprise Video]

* Assist Feeding (Not recommended) [BHB Enterprise Video]

* Scenting rodent with bedding used by natal rats

My big question is have anyone used the splitting/cutting open the rodent's head?
Does it work? Or which method worked best for you and do you have your own
methods? Any help would be appreciated! I hope this can help new owners too!

-Tinson

[LGL]

I've heard of many tricks, but the one that seems to ALWAYS work for me is this:

No matter what size snake it is, take a live fuzzy rat/rat pup (which is young enough where it can't cause any damage to your snake) and leave it in with your trouble-eater snake for about 30 minutes. You can either put the snake and rodent in a smaller tub all by themselves, or just leave the rodent in the snake's cage. You can turn off the lights if you want to add some security. Close the cage and check back 30 minutes later.

I've never had any extremely picky feeders here, but doing that always gets my snakes to start eating again. I just did that tonight to get snakes off of their winter fast, and it worked like a charm!

[kc261]

An important thing to realize is that a lot of "picky" BPs are that way because they don't feel secure in their enclosure. So if you have a snake that is not eating or is being picky, the first things you should look at are whether or not all your husbandry is on track. Temps, humidity, appropriate hides, etc. Even if you have all the basics, you might just have a shy BP who will do better with crumpled newspaper or fake foliage to take up any open space in their enclosure.

After you've gone over all of that with a fine toothed comb and addressed any possible issues, then you can assume you have a picky eater.

As far as tricks to deal with that, I don't have a lot of those, because I don't have many snakes that haven't responded to getting husbandry issues straightened out. My most stubborn was actually a corn hatchling who had eaten 3 times for the breeder, but then refused to eat when we brought him home. We were putting him in a deli cup to feed him because that is what pretty much everyone was recommending, and what the breeder had done. I finally decided to take a bit of advise form the BP world, and NOT put him in a feeding enclosure in case that was causing stress. He was out & about when I went to feed him, so I put the pinkie in his favorite hide, and the next morning it was gone.

Other tricks I have heard of include offering a smaller meal, leaving a live but young enough to be harmless mouse or rat in the enclosure overnight, leaving an f/t in the enclosure overnight, covering the enclosure with a towel after putting the food in, or offering a different species of rodent. You'll notice that most of these still have to do with making the snake feel more secure.

[Nagini88]

the worst feeder I had was a baby corn. I got it feeding by putting a bit of chicken baby food in its mouth. I did this 3 days apart for 2 weeks and it went onto feed again, though I used this as a very last resort. I tried live, frozen, different species and nothing with this one