Not Eating

[obsidianembrace]

He's young, about 230g.

It's not that feeding in the enclosure causes aggression, it's just with conditioning the way I see it... hand -->food will turn into hand=food.

In my experience that's what happens when I gave my rats treats.. fingers in the bars were always perfectly safe until we started giving them treats through the bars. We had to open the door and give treats that way to avoid getting fingers chomped by unsuspecting friends and family.

[FireStorm]

He's young, about 230g.

It's not that feeding in the enclosure causes aggression, it's just with conditioning the way I see it... hand -->food will turn into hand=food.

In my experience that's what happens when I gave my rats treats.. fingers in the bars were always perfectly safe until we started giving them treats through the bars. We had to open the door and give treats that way to avoid getting fingers chomped by unsuspecting friends and family.

And I'm telling you that doesn't happen with snakes, in my experience with a decent sized group of animals. Why? First of all, snakes are no where near as trainable (aka "contitionable" if that's a word) as rats. They don't make the association. And even if they were trainable enough to make associations like that, moving them to feed wouldn't solve the problem because they would just associate being taken out of the enclosure with being fed.

[Kodieh]

He's young, about 230g.

It's not that feeding in the enclosure causes aggression, it's just with conditioning the way I see it... hand -->food will turn into hand=food.

In my experience that's what happens when I gave my rats treats.. fingers in the bars were always perfectly safe until we started giving them treats through the bars. We had to open the door and give treats that way to avoid getting fingers chomped by unsuspecting friends and family.

Rats are buttheads even without conditioning.

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[obsidianembrace]

Rats are buttheads even without conditioning.

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haha no way. that's mice

But I will think about it, thanks for pointing that out.

So how long can he go before I should worry?

[FireStorm]

Its hard to say, especially without seeing a pic so we can judge his condition now. Do you have a digital scale? If he starts losing weight, then it may be an issue. From the feeding schedule you describe, I would guess he would be on the leaner side. So, if he was in our collection I would probably make it a priority to get him eating. I would make sure temps were correct, clutter up his enclosure as much as possible, black out/cover the sides of the enclosure to minimize stress, leave him alone for a week, then offer him a live appropriately sized prey item in his enclosure (probably something slightly smaller than what he normally eats). I'd just put the prey item in the enclosure, cover the enclosure (or turn out the lights) and go away for 15min or so. If he doesn't eat remove the prey item and try again in a week. This method as worked for me so far.

It isn't normal for a 230g BP to fast, so obviously something is bothering him.