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Re: Is my baby ball python going to starve himself??!
 Originally Posted by Abigail23
I put the mice in a plastic zipblock bag and emerge it into warm/hot water for about an hour. When the stomach is soft and seems fully thawed I then blow dry it to heat up the body to about 98 degrees to recreate body heat, and then I just walk it over and put it in the tank
This is wrong, as zina10 pointed out in her post that followed yours. When you did this (thawed in warm/hot water an hour!) you inadvertently caused the mice to SPOIL.
Snakes don't want cooked mice...they sure don't want spoiled mice (gag!). Thaw in cold water always, as long as it takes for the rodent to be soft thru & thru...feel with
your fingers to know. A small mouse (like a hopper) won't take an hour to thaw even in COLD water....more like 15 minutes. (science hint: things thaw much faster in
water than in air...never thaw rodents on the counter either.) Once thawed, only then you warm them up, first in very warm water, & then try using a hairdryer briefly.
They cool off very fast, make sure you do this near the cage, OR, find a way to keep them hot while you walk to the cage.
Then much depends on how you offer the prey...even if the prey is hot, if you move it in a way that only scares the snake, your snake still won't eat. Remember that
rodents do NOT rush up & offer themselves to snakes. Snakes (BPs) like to ambush a rodent that's just going past...so make it LOOK that way. Don't approach
the snake with the rodent: instead, make it look like it's casually hopping past- close enough for the snake to see, smell & grab. (you have feeding tongs I assume?)
A little motion, but not too much. Most BPs are braver about grabbing prey when they aren't out in the "open" (cruising their cage), hopefully you time the thawing right,
& feed at NIGHT, when they normally hunt. Maybe dim the lights in the room you see by.
Last edited by Bogertophis; 11-05-2018 at 04:12 PM.
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