Finally got her to eat!

[Satana]

My 1 year old bp Bathory stopped eating at the end of November, and with her being my first bp I got worried and searched the forums and found out with her being so young she should not be fasting. I took her to the vet and said she was healthy and to just keep trying. So I did EVERYTHING I could to try to get her to eat. Nothing worked, so today I went to a local reptile expo and picked up two ASF's figuring this was my last chance. I put her in a bin with the ASF and within a minute she was gulping it down!

I have a couple ASF questions.
1. How fast do they grow? The expo is 2x a month but it's kind of far. Could I buy a couple months worth with out them getting too big?

2. Is there any chance I could get her back to rats after eating an ASF?

Thank you!

[Kaorte]

Hello fellow Chicagoan!

I also attend the Wheaton reptile show (which is the one you go to I assume)

I picked up a trio to breed at the show earlier this may. From what I have read, and in my experience, the ASFs grow fairly quickly, reaching adulthood in about 3 months. Kind of a long time, but they reproduce like crazy. Back to back litters.

ASFs are nice because they don't get much bigger than the size of a small rat. I'm not sure how big your BP is at a year old, perhaps adult ASFs would be the perfect size, therefor keeping a few of them around for a few months wouldn't render them useless as feeders for your snake.

As for switching back to rats, I think it is possible but sometimes balls can be very picky and never switch back. Once my colony gets started, I plan on switching all my snakes over to ASFs so I don't need to buy frozen anymore.

[Satana]

Hello! Yes I am talking about the Wheaton show. Thank you for the info! I was worried that they would out grow her if I bought in bulk. Seems like they will be perfect. I'm not horribly worried about switching her back to rats, I'm just glad she finally ate something!

[Kaorte]

As far as keeping live rodents goes, ASFs are by far my favorite. They have virtually no smell to them. Even on cleaning day, the cage doesn't really smell bad at all.

They are even pretty cute and fun to watch!

It is such a relief when a fasting snake takes food for the first time in a while. I was praising my pastel (like she can hear me ) when she took a rat the the other day after being off feed for months!

[Satana]

Wow little to no smell! That's amazing!

And I did the same! I told her proud of her I was haha