Assist Feeding Question

[sharkrocket]

Hey All!

I just tried assist feeding for the first time. I have a baby ball python that wouldn't take F/T or live rat pinkies. This guy is about 80 grams.

I thawed a rat pinkie, and I tried to pry the snake's mouth open. They make it look so easy on videos, and writeups seem to gloss over this part. Anyways, the guy would NOT open his mouth for me. He stubbornly kept his jaw clenched, and the pinky was too soft for me to really get enough leverage to open it. Eventually the pinky's head popped (eww) and I knew at that point that the game was not working out for me.

Does anyone have some advice?

Thanks!

Philip

[hypnotixdmp]

1st thing I want to say is baby balls eat hoppers as soon as they come out.

The next thing I need to know is, how long have you had the ball? Has it been off feed for a while, if so, how long is a while?


0.3 Normals (Coilette, Athena and Mary Jane)
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1.0 Spider (Zeus)
1.0 Mojave (Prometheus)

0.1 Brazilian Rainbow Boa (Stella)
0.1 BCI (Kiyoko)

[Don]

If you really are at the point of assist feeding, it is a good idea to get someone experienced to show you how to do it. SnakeByteTV had a good video recently on it that may also help.

[sharkrocket]

1st thing I want to say is baby balls eat hoppers as soon as they come out.

The next thing I need to know is, how long have you had the ball? Has it been off feed for a while, if so, how long is a while?

Are you talking about mice? If so, I could see them eating hoppers first thing. I believe with rats pinkies are common as first food items.

As for the next thing you need to know, I have had the ball for a month, and it has never taken a meal with us. If he were well started I wouldn't be concerned about that, but this guy is a baby. 80 grams or so.

If you really are at the point of assist feeding, it is a good idea to get someone experienced to show you how to do it. SnakeByteTV had a good video recently on it that may also help.

Thanks, but I have watched all of those videos. I am wondering specifically why it looks so easy to pry their mouths open on the videos, but my guy was so stubborn!

[snakesRkewl]

You probably should be offering live mouse hoppers until it starts eating for you.
Do not hold the snake until it eats 3-4 meals for you.
If you don't know how to assist feed then you'll only end up stressing the poor snake out more so and making it not want to eat even more, find someone that does.

Are you wetting the rat pinky down before trying to assist it?
Mouse hoppers work really well to assist feed also, a bit smaller and easy to get them to swallow.
Same technique, prekill the hopper, wet it down, touch the nose to the back of the snakes mouth, gently clamp down on the snakes mouth and let the snake wrap up on your fingers.
Set snake down and let it wrap the food and swallow on it's own.
If it doesn't take it that time wait a few days and try again...

[angllady2]

Assist feeding is not as easy as the videos make it look. It is very difficult and extremely stressful for you and the baby. Now, you say you have had him for a month and he hasn't eaten yet, what did he weigh when you got him? Has he lost weight? And if so, how much weight?

If you are very concerned about him feeding, try starting him out with live prey and later switching to f/t. As little as he is, he can go a surprisingly long time without eating. I've had a newly hatched baby go 7 loooooong weeks before I finally got so scared I had to assist feed him. He took a few tries to catch on, but once he did he became an eating machine.

Now, once you have exhausted all your other options and must resort to assist feeding to keep him alive. Once he is down to skin and bones and looks almost flat, then you can try assisting. I start out with mouse hoppers or fuzzy rats. Once you kill the rat, dunk it in warm water while you get the baby ready. Grip it gently but firmly right behind the head, take the fuzzy in the fingers of your other hand. Press the fuzzy's nose to his nose, and use the very tip of your first finger to gently pry open his mouth a little. Once you get it open a tiny bit, they almost always gape wide to try and spit your finger out. Slide the fuzzy into the baby's mouth, press on the back of the fuzzy's skull to get it as far back into the baby's mouth as you can. Gently close the baby's mouth over the fuzzy, and pull back slightly to hook it on the baby's teeth.

Gently set the baby down. Now, if you are one of those crazy fortunate people, baby will wrap and swallow just like magic. If you are like the rest of us, the baby will convulse like a loose firehose and do everything in it's power to spit the prey. If it does, you get to start all over again. Just keep on putting the fuzzy back in. Once the baby is worn out, it will go ahead and swallow. Then it will hate you for a day or so.

It is a very difficult process, and it upsets you and the baby, so please only use it as a last resort.

Gale

[loonunit]

80 grams isn't so small. When was this guy hatched? Did you hatch him? And you know for a fact he hasn't ever eaten?

I wait a full 8 weeks after hatching before I start assisting. If you assist sooner than that, odds are the snake just isn't hungry, and will spit it out. And assist feeding does stress the animal, particularly about its FOOD ITEMS... which may lead to it refusing to take food on its own the following week. Vicious cycle.

Um, but if he has gone the full 8 weeks without eating, then you should practice opening mouths. Do you have an adult on hand that is eating? Take the adult out, and practice opening it's mouth with a Q-tip. Get a firm grip on the back of the head/top of the neck (you may want someone to grab the rest of the snake if you've never done this before, because there's usually some thrashing.) Hold the Q-tip horizontally across the snake's nose, and push up with the middle of the Q-tip. Push up on that little split-lip divot, in the upper lip, the one that looks a little like the split lip of a cat. The upper jaw should open, and you can slide the Q-tip down so that the mouth can't close, and you can take a leisurely look around inside. This how you do mouth checks, to make sure there's no RIs, etc.

Assist feeding is a little more like pushing that upper jaw open with the tip of the Q-tip. (Don't actually stick the tip of a Q-tip inside the snake's mouth, the cotton will catch on the teeth and make a mess.) Except you do it with the nose of the rodent. Try to get it all the way down the throat as far as the shoulders. Otherwise the ball python will be able to spit it out too easily. (He still might spit it out.)

Here's a video of a mouth check. There's some gentle pressure to the back of the mouth hinges that seems to help her get the mouth open a little. Note that this is an EXTREMELY cooperative snake:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ1C-TKIfvc

[FragginDragon]

One trick I use when I absolutely have no options left but to assist feed is to take a 3" x 5" index card and fold it in half, and use the folded edge (to prevent paper cuts to it's mouth) to gently separate the jaws, using the card to hold the lower jaw down. My helper then uses the tongs to place the feeder (prepped as suggested previously by wetting it) inside the mouth so that the head of the feeder is just at the beginning of the throat, at the same time removing the card.

[sharkrocket]

I had a successful assist feed today. I combined a lot of the useful info you peeps provided.

1. Firmly held the base of his skull at the neck
2. used a q-top "bar" to pry his mouth open
3. Lovely assistant placed the pinkie in his mouth towards the back of the throat
4. I removed the q-top "bar"
5. I pressed his head and tugged the pinkie to lock it in place
6. I straightened him out and slowly released him after he calmed down a bit
7. Success on the second try! First try he thrashed it out, but I didn't straighten him out.

I will see if there were any negative repercussions, but thanks to everyone that helped out with this. I feel like I helped this little dude out.

[loonunit]

I don't think there will be negative repercussions. Usually they are just happy and kinda confused about finally being full. They still might not eat on their own next time, and they still might try to spit it out. But every *successful* assist seems to help stimulate appetite and gets them closer to actually hunting for their own food. The hunger and slow building of strength from eating does outweigh the trauma of having food stuffed forcibly into their mouths.