Quote Originally Posted by TJ_Burton View Post
- How exactly were you offering food?
- How did he respond or act during your attempts to feed him? Was he defensive (hooding/hissing/false striking)
- Was he ever without proper heating for a significant period of time? (i.e. during transport from the store to your home for longer than an hour)
I at first tried using tongs, I wiggled the mouse in front of his nose until he started to smell it, he at this point would become disinterested and start trying to climb up to smell my hand. When I put him in a feeding cage he would generally hiss when introduced to the food, whenever I saw him hissing I would place the mouse in view and leave him alone so he wouldn't get too stressed. I only live about 25 min away from the store I got him at, and that is the only time he was away from heat.

Quote Originally Posted by interloc View Post
Get him back and here are some ideas. How I feed mine is I take the ft on my tweezers and try and bump his nose with it. With mine that usually works. Another idea is to take the lid off a little container and put a ft on it all night. Usually he stumbles across it and scarfs it down. You can also try scenting the ft with tuna water. I've heard that works for some people. Keep us posted.

I have tried those, he would start hissing and trying to move away from the mouse, the reason I haven't tried scenting was because I was told that once you start scenting you can get a snake who is picky for life, and since the previous owner(reptile store) didn't, I didn't want to start him on something making it harder to convincing him to eat.
The owner of the store called today to say they couldn't even get him to eat, and would have to assist feed. I decided that since he was my first snake, I wouldn't be able to handle force feeding him. I miss him terribly but I think I made the best choice possible for his health. I do plan in the future to get another hognose once I have more experience in caring for snakes in general. I am thinking switching to ball pythons would be a bit easier, especially since the area I live in there are so many people are trying to rehome.
Its a hard day for me, after 2 months of having his cute little stub nose exploring his tank, its really hard to say goodbye.

Without going completely off topic since this is a hognose section, aside from the slightly different heat and humidity changes, how different are ball pythons? And what are some important questions I should ask the owner/store? The thought of having another snake I would have to return would be too much and I want to make sure I have a good eater.