Fuzzies vs Hoppers

[jarobin]

Hi all - when I got my bp Parker, the woman at the pet store said he was eating hoppers (f/t). When we fed last Monday I realized she sold us a fuzzy instead. Not knowing what the difference was I asked today when I picked up the next f/t meal. I told them that Parker is 83 grams and was supposedly being fed hoppers at their store, but i was given a fuzzy, which he ate fine. They told me there isn't much difference at all between hoppers and fuzzies and to get the hopper.

So, it's feeding time and I open the package and since you can't see the mice inside the bag before opening it I was surprised at how much bigger the hopper was. It had so much more hair and was a decent size mouse. Parker doesn't seem to be getting the hang of eating it either. He strikes it from center and gnaws a bit. He dropped it a few times, and he swallowed a decent size piece of reptibark that i got out of his mouth, but he won't eat the hopper. is it too big for him? or is he just being finicky?

[Skittles1101]

He's being picky. Babies can easily physically eat hoppers, but they also take a little while to get the hang of "eating" lol.

[cschneider]

Rule of thumb, don't ever feed anything bigger than the thickest part of your bp's body. Live hoppers are usually used to stimulate the babies feeding response since they hop around a lot, hence their name, so there is really no reason to use them if they are frozen in my opinion, unless your bp would refuse fuzzies.

It is very cute watching babies learn to feed. They are very uncoordinated at first lol. He will catch on. Sometimes it might help if you leave to f/t in the cage overnight, so he can go back at it later.

If your having issues of him swallowing the substraint, I would suggest switching to paper towels or newspaper until he gets a bit bigger, or permanently. I find paper towels much easier to clean up.

[jarobin]

he is eating it! my boyfriend had to help him get it head first, but he is swallowing just fine now =)

[ed4281]

Do your self a favor and stick to the rat fuzzies. As an adult feeding 1 rat is much easier than feeding 7 mice. Also they don't do as well physically on mice. I have 1 that won't touch a rat at all and it's a pain in the butt.

[angllady2]

I don't know about the whole " they do better on rats than on mice" thing. About half of my balls are rat eaters, the other half mouse eaters.

They all gain weight at roughly the same pace as long as I feed an adequate number of mice. Yes, it does get tedious feeding 4 or 5 adult mice as opposed to 1 rat, but to me I don't care what they eat as long as they eat!

I also want to point out I have 4 snakes who alternate between rats and mice, I let them have whatever they want. Maybe I spoil them, but they're my babies so I can spoil them if I want to.

I would much rather have consistent feeds, even if those are composed of 4 or more mice, than hit-and-miss feedings or outright fasts trying to force them to eat rats.

Now, about your snake. If you can get rat fuzzies, which are roughly the same size as a mouse hopper, and your snake will eat them, then by all means feed the rats.

However, if you can't consistently get the rat fuzzies, your baby will do fine on mouse hoppers and soon young adult mice.

Gale

[RetiredJedi]

So far my 122g pastel is on rat fuzzy's which are bigger than the small mice I am feeding my 105g normal. As soon as the mice are gone I am switching my normal to rats and getting both on the same feeding schedule, which is my task for this week. Also, check out this video from Garrick DeMeyer where he shows his technique for feeding:

[kitedemon]

Something else you might try, when you heat the frozen mouse or rat for that matter heat the head more than the body. A big component of the vision is IR or heat detecting with the heat pits, a hot head () is a big old sign 'start here' I have a one eyed snake and I have to be very careful in heating the head much more than the body other wise she always has troubles.