Quote Originally Posted by frankykeno View Post
With the 4 we assisted, they were hatched May 5 and May 20th. We didn't even consider assisting until mid-July and it was obvious those 4 were just not picking up the eating thing and were seriously falling behind their siblings in weight. We went by clutch average weight and those refusing were in the range of 60 grams while their feeding clutchmates were hitting 100 grams or more (they had all been within grams of each other in weight at hatching).

Don't rush to assist though. Do everything else first. It's stressful on the babies and something you don't want to rush into.
Jo, did you ever try the newspaper trick? I don't see it here very often so I don't know if a lot of people know about it, so forgive me if this is something you already tried. After about 2 or 3 refusals of live hoppers I like to stuff the babies shoeboxes full of wadded up balls of newspaper. Put enough in there so that it's completely filled. Then give the snakes a few days to make tunnels through the paper. Release a live hopper or two in there for a day or so. It really seems to help the timid ones a lot. I think it gives them more opportunity to hunt from an ambush position.

Mark