Albino Burm Feeding Question

[Brie]

My other seven snakes gladly eat f/t or prekilled (cornsnake) but Ares is the only one that I haven't converted over.

Ares is a 2010 Albino Burmese Python. He's approximately 25 inches long, I'm not sure of his weight right off the top of my head.

Ares was a slow to eat baby... but finally got him to eat mice hoppers. I switched him over to rat weanlings last week.

He ate them.... alive. You could hear it squeaking in his belly. For almost 10 minutes. He did it again today after refusing f/t yesterday... I offered him a live one and he slurped it down... alive.

What in the world is wrong with him??

[JLC]

Could be the prey you're offering is too small for him to feel like he needs to bother killing it. If he can simply "suck them down" then they're probably too small.

As for the f/t issue....how long will you let him go hungry? Do you offer live right after he's refused a f/t? If I were trying to get a snake to switch over, I would stop offering live altogether. Wait 2-3 weeks...then offer a nicely warmed thawed critter. If they refuse, I'd wait another two weeks....let them get gooood and hungry. I would not give in and offer live unless it got so bad that the snake started visibly losing weight. Especially an animal like a burm, that will typically eat anything remotely edible. It may take a few tries to get him to recognize the different smell of frozen/thawed prey...but once he does, I'm sure he'll take to it just fine.

[Brie]

The longest we let him go was five weeks. At that point he had dropped a noticeable amount of weight. He was small to begin with and the weight loss concerned me. Even at that point it took a while to get him to eat ANYTHING.

My bps were easy to switch over. He stumps me... since I was told "burms will eat anything". This has definitely NOT been the case with him.

I'll up the size of his prey and see if that makes a difference next week.

[JLC]

Hopefully some of our guys with experience raising burms will chime in soon. My only experience is with one particular individual snake who was already 8' long and a greedy little soul who would eat anything remotely resembling warm-fuzzy.

[Brie]

I hope so too JLC... I do appreciate everyones thoughts on this.

[Aztec4mia]

I would definitely up the prey size to the largest weaned, Retired breeder mice fit this size pretty well but why go back to mice if you have him taking rats, to make it easy, the ol' "go for a prey size a little wider than the thickest part of the snake" works well since one rat size can vary by store. Prey size will increase rather quickly in the first year; you could be starting on rabbits this time next year if you wanted to. Try feeding him at night or when it is quite in the house for a couple hours get the P/K or F/T rat and place it in its cage and leave him alone. When I first started my burm on frozen rabbits he would not eat when I was there, so I left it in there and did some stuff around the house, came back about a hour and a half and it was gone.

[wilomn]

Got a picture of him? That would help.

Have you tried day old chicks?

[Brie]

I'll try that Aztec. He's our only burm... having had only a bp for over a decade, I'm discovering that he's very different. So we are still learning much about his kind.

I have not tried him on chicks. Is that a good idea?

I don't have any recent pictures of him but cleaning day is tomorrow so I'll get a few then and post them here.

Thanks so much for the input... I really appreciate it.

[wilomn]

Most burmese love chicks. Baby birds too.

I've started many many a stubborn feeder on chicks.

[Inugohan]

I experienced similar problems with my own burm a couple years ago. I had the cage a couple degrees too cold on the cold side. If its not at least 80 cold side, 90 warm side, the snake might not eat because of that. My temps are now 82 cool side and 92 warm side, and he has yet to refuse a meal since upping the temps(almost a year ago now). Also, for prey size, definately go bigger! They can fit amazingly big rodents in their stomaches for their size! Good luck, ~Caylan.S.~