Asssit and force feeding

[cinderbird]

I got these two stunning spider possible het hypo girls in a trade at the beginning of the month and only one ate for me. Since loosing a baby a few months ago I've been super nervous about letting young animals go too long without a meal. The one girl wants to eat, but her aim was bad and after a few bad strikes she'd give up. The other girl is very nervous and had a bad shed. She let me soak her and remove most of it so i let her settle in again. I offered food twice since then and she didn't take. The baby i lost went from fine looking to skin and bones over night. Its been 5 feedings and refusals so i decided to assist feed.

Baby 12 (referred to until she gets a real name) constricted and ate as soon as i put the fuzzys head in her mouth. GO baby 12!

Baby 11, her very shy sister has barely shown interest in food. She balls up at anything. As such except for the shed incident and cage cleaning she gets no handling. I went to assist feed her and she kept spitting out the hopper. I ended up force feeding her and moving the hopper down her body manually until I was sure it was to a point she couldn't spit it out (couldn't see the tail in her mouth). After that she stopped struggling and seemed to relax a lot) Its been about 2 hours since i force fed and I'd put her back under her hide on the warm side of her tub.

I guess I'm just worried about her because I don't want to lose her. I know babies have been force fed before and lived to tell the tale and become voracious eaters, I suppose I'm looking for tales of babies needing some eating assistance and then growing up to become great eaters. And to say that even the average keeper can do this.

[rabernet]

She should be fine. Each hatchling that I've had to either assist feed or force feed has gone on to eventually eat just as voraciously as the rest of the kiddos once they figured things out. Be persistent, offer live food at each regularly scheduled feeding, and if they don't eat, then assist. That's how I've done it.

[Ammodawg]

We bought a het Pied girl about a year ago now. She started out at about 50 grams and did not want to eat at all. We tried everything you could think of, both live and frozen mice hoppers, pinky mice and she wanted nothing to do with them. I assist fed this precious little gem of ours for four months straight. In that four months time she faked us out one and took on her own once, then the next week it was back to being assist fed.

Now our little girl is eating everything that is put in front of her, she is now weighs in at 900 grams. She's now caught up with some of our two year old boys and girls and has surpassed a couple of them. This little girl holds a very special place in our hearts.

It will take some time and patience, but your little girl will come around and start eating all on her own.

We will keep her in our prayers

[cinderbird]

Thanks for the stories and advice

As of last night she'd moved to her cool side hide and was hanging out. I'll check her again after work.

[Snakefreak64]

it seems as soon as we start to panic, they eat (hopefully), good luck

[FireStorm]

I have a Poss. Het Pied girl I produced that I had to assist feed for a few months...now she eats great and is catching up to her sisters quickly. I don't know why some babies are like that, but they really can turn around. Don't give up - she'll figure it out eventually!

[Freakie_frog]

I have two that I'm working with right now. I've had them get so far that by the time I try to assist feed their systems can't handle it and they die.. since then I've only had to do it a hand full of times and have yet to lose another one..

[TrpnBils]

Depending on how big the snake is, you might want to try FFing tail segments rather than whole pinkies (or whatever size). I haven't had to to this with a ball python, but one of our green trees refused to eat when it was younger and after 8 weeks of no feeding I started feeding 1-2" sections of rat tails that were taken of my RTBs rats and now he eats like a pig.

I tried FFing full pinkies but they're just too "mushy" and I couldn't get a good angle to get them to swallow it, but the rat tails kinda just slide right down and they're better than nothing. Just keep in mind to go from the big end to the small end to go along with the hair.

[darkbloodwyvern]

I've been lucky enough to avoid FF, though i did have a VERY picky eater. super shy and all she wanted was FT DARK RATS. White rats, live ratsof any color, darker mice FT OR live were not interesting or scared her. As soon as I figured it out, she was a skinny girl but then she started pounding them. It was amazing what a great eater she was when she had exactly what she wanted. Sadly, she died for different reasons but was a great girl and a wonderful eater once her dumb human figured out what she liked! Miss the little thing, she was sweet.