Emulate live prey worked better for me....

[kaitala]

As I'm new to BPs, this whole "hand feeding happy rat dance" thing was new to me. First feeding, with my reluctant feeders, I tried "just dangle the rat in front of them". Nope. There was interest, tongue flicking, even touching the rat with the tongue, but no strikes.

Then I read on here the thread about "how they feed in nature" to get fasting snakes eating again. So I got to thinking, rats do NOT ordinarily hover in the air for 5 minutes above the snake. They would run around, causing vibrations the snake would feel, as well as being warm and smelling like rat.

So next time, I dangled it a bit, and got their attention, then made the warm f/t rat "run" around the enclosure, touching walls and substrate. I use reptibark, so it didn't stick to the prey at all, but a finer substrate, you may want to only hit the walls of the tub.

Of 5 snakes, 2 took the feeder off tongs (1 did with Happy Rat Dance alone, the spider, and he didn't need any encouragement this time around, barely got the lid off before he struck). With 2, I wasn't getting a response, so I dropped theirs on a plate, too, and they ate from the plate. Only one refused food.

Just an anecdote that I hope helps people with interested, but non-striking snakes. And I have no idea why 2 that wouldn't eat with the HRD or the tongs all of a sudden became plate fed, but I'm happy about it.

[dr del]

Gotta love the zombie rat dance.