Please eat, baby!

[Galaxygirl]

My girl used to take F/T after some wiggling but now only takes it if I leave it on the bottom of the tank. No amount of wiggling can entice her to strike. I'm perfectly fine with dropping it in and checking back in a few minutes. It's usually gone. She's up to just over 700g now.

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Wish mine were that easy. I should charge fees for the amount of dancing the rat has to do.

[blue roses]

I am going through the switch from live to fT with my new girl. The first time i fed her it had been 2 weeks since she ate and i just wanted to get some food in her so i fed her a live rat pup, the next time i offered a FT rat pup and she wouldn't touch it, so i waited another week, I decided to feed her at the same time as my other two, so i took her food and sat it on top of her cage to start defrosting and shut off all the lights. I fed the others, then finished defrosting and heating hers. Using the tongs i wiggled the rat and stuck its little nose into her hide like i was just a curious little rat pup, i backed out then stuck its nose in the hide again and she hit and coiled, then dragged it into the hide and ate. I find her still very shy and doesn't come out until the house is very quiet, and all the lights are out.

[DellaF]

We got a new baby bp a couple of weeks ago he has ate twice for us. Once he was at the ending stages of shedding. Last night he ate again. I tried the hopper dance but he didn't care for it so I just left it by his hide. I came back 5 minutes later and it was gone.

I hope he will eat for you soon. I had an adult stem eating for many months I reduced his food to a rat pup and he ate. May have been coincidence though.

[Coluber42]

He ate, he ate!
It's been only five days since the last attempt, but he's a youngster and while I don't think he's really much underweight, he's not chubby. I think he's gotten a little more settled in though in that time, too. He's been hanging out with his head sticking out of the hide more of the time.

This time I shielded the front of the tank with a piece of translucent plastic. I turned a lamp on in the living room before it actually got dark outside so he wouldn't be startled by the light going on, although I think he's gotten a little more used to that too. I left the mouse to thaw in the room with him for several hours, then put it under a heat lamp to get good and warm. I even stabbed it a couple of times with a knife to hopefully make it more fragrant. And as soon as I poked its little head into his hide, he grabbed it. Once I let go, I didn't want to startle him by getting up to leave the room, so I just sat still until he was done (trying to watch while also staying out of sight behind the plastic shield). This little boy sure is a cautious one (fits with his overall personality though) - he wanted to make good and sure that mouse was dead and gone, and he stayed wrapped tightly for a really, really long time before finally relaxing and swallowing. I finally got up and quietly left the room after he slithered off to his warm hide.

It's really sort of silly how pleased I am with Hoosac for eating his mouse considering that I have been feeding mice to snakes for 20 years, LOL.

[tembii]

Wish mine were that easy. I should charge fees for the amount of dancing the rat has to do.

That was a pretty good joke. I feel that vibe!!

[Albert Clark]

I've got an adult male that very suddenly won't touch any sized rat...now he wants five mice instead. Probably because he figured out how much more expensive that it. Sigh.

My male pied is in the same boat! Only wants live or freshly killed mice. So I found a Petco in Weschester N.Y. that sell very large live mice for 3.99 each. I buy two of those every two weeks for him. I alternate how I present them but he does not refuse mice. Except frozen thawed!

[whiSki08]

how many minutes does everybody try there techniques before they give up?

[bks2100]

If you're getting good response, but no real strike try getting longer tongs and keeping your body as far to the side as possible to keep from him being able to see you. If he's in a tub opening it as little as possible. Don't turn the lights on to start with, offer the meal in as dark an environment as you can to help from being seen. Once a snake is coiled around prey he becomes vulnerable to attack, sometimes they want to eat and are hungry they are just too afraid of the risks to take the reward. Good luck!

I'll have to try all of this. I have a banana female that was pounding f/t at the breeder, but the cross country shipping along with being in all different surroundings must have stressed her enough to go off food. She went 6 weeks with no food and no weight loss really, then I finally got her to eat a f/t and it was at night, I had next to no lights on and barely got the tub open. I think I woke her up too and all she really saw was this rat dancing in front of her. I wish I could get that to happen again. I'll have to try feeding her on a separate day from everyone else so I can just focus on being sneaky.

how many minutes does everybody try there techniques before they give up?

I only have two snakes that aren't too interested in f/t, and one is still kind of new and big, so I'm not pushing it hard. The other one I only try like 2 minutes or so. At a certain point she just seems to try to run and hide from it and at that point I don't want to stress the snake. I could be wrong though and maybe a little more effort would get her to feed.