to be honest that is a relief in itself, to know that I am not missing simple solution! :roll: Lil obviously a problem child, will not give up on her, as long as she maintains her weight and general condition I will continue to offer pinky every 4 days or so, or she will have to go back to the shop again. Am hoping is just a case of me holding my nerve a bit longer
well i think you should wait try see if she eats just wondering how do u normally solve problems snakes bit like people fuzzy. maybe you should wait, but every problem can be solved in time either it is snakes or people. if she wasnt your first snake you should have experince when your dealing with lot more then one snake.
A while back we purchased a hatchling pair of Butter Mots from a show. I don't think they'd ever been fed before they were so small. Anyways, it took about a week and a half to get them to eat. The key was that the enclosures we had them in were too large (we start our younglings in shoe box-sized containers). So, we put them in something smaller, a rectangular deli container. We continued to offer chunks of pinky and as soon as they were in the smaller enclosures they both started eating. Now their feeding record is quite good.
thanks, Dragoncharm, that was the next thing I'm going to try, just worried about regulating heat in small box, using heatmats for the size of container I'm using, so would you say just have edge of small box over heatmat? was worried change would cause Lil more stress, but willing to try anything to get my little one eating again
moved Lil to smaller box, temps and humidity fine, left her to settle.........no damn feeding. She dropped weight to 9g so am syringe feeding blenderised mouse until i can get live pinky to try. (local petshop willing but only had hoppers right now) She is now back up to 12g and very lively, so the saga goes on
That`s good to hear it might help poor Lil syringing it. Is Not good idea unless you know what your doing and has i see if you feed your Lil Live pinky she wont go back to frozen also it is Illigale in great britain and dangerous to Lil Now i see you need to think things careful before you do anything like that.
feeding live Actually feeding a live pinky is not illegal in the UK if it can be proven it is the only way to get the snake to eat, as I have detailed feeding and weight records that would be no problem. Secondly, feeding a live PINKY is in no way dangerous to the snake, and it is recommended as a good way to 'kickstart' stubborn hatchlings back into feeding voluntarily. I would then have to switch back to f/t as it becomes possible. If you actually read my post properly you would see I haven't yet found a pinky small enough and will syringe feed with blended mouse until I can find 1. Sorry if this upsets you Sam42, but I am prioritising the health of my snake, I can assure you this is not a decision taken lightly.
RE: feeding live oh by the way it is illagale i have friends over in great britain and they asure me it is. and it is wrong!!!!!!! health of snake is your own problem dont make it worse like i said you should know bout it before you buy other snakes
RE: feeding live I don't understand how something can be wrong if it is done in Nature. Snakes eat rodents (for the most part)...end of story. I'm pretty darn liberal about things and I keep fuzzy animals as pets but it's still a part of Nature. When I couldn't get my hatchlings to eat I had to cut the pinkies up into smaller pieces in order for the snakes to be able to eat them. The only way to get pinkies small enough is if you breed the mice yourself and take the babies away right away and freeze them for later keeping. As a sidenote, I prefer feeding frozen myself (because you don't have to worry about parasites and the rodent biting your snake), but sometimes it is tough to get them to accept it.
RE: feeding live have you tried to offer Lil a brained pinky? (pierce the head so some brain fluid comes out) or just the head? I had to do that for my grey rat to jump start his appetite. he's a picky eater. and i dont see anything wrong with feeding snakes live mice, as long they are small enough to do no harm to the snake. as J9 said, a pinky is too small to do any harm to a snake, they have no claws or teeth yet. i think it's a strange law that britain has to not allow live rodents to be fed to reptiles, not even live pinks. over here, i've gone the petstore a few times to pick up live pinks for hatchlings to get them to eat. as soon as they get some appetite going, then i switch them over to frozen. and J9 is right, it's not wholey illegal, as long as you can show that the snake will NOT take frozen/thawed. the health of the reptile is weighed over the live rodent.
Thanks for your help, FL & Drangoncharm Lil is successfully digesting the mouse-o-blend, and her weight now 12g from the 9 it had dropped to. Will syringe again 15th, search for pinky continues........
What i was trying to say is it may be natural in wild so its nature but these pet are capture breed so they only know frozen they know nothing else but frozen.
not exactly...you're making an assumption of animal behavior. i know snake breeders and owners who've had to feed their snakes live because they wouldnt take frozen. period. i know my own rat snake, whose first meal was a frozen pinkie, but i've had to feed him live on occasion before he would go back to frozen. i dont know why he does this. i dont know if suddenly he just has a need for something alive to get his appetite going. but it works.
how many generations of breeding, of manipulating behaviour and appearence have produced a pet dog that will fawn at your feet? and yet if given the opportunity many will show pure wolf behaviour, my sister's tiny lhasa was body-slamming a terrier last week, hilarious. snake behaviour, eg feeding habit has not been manipulated to any degree, except many breeders dispose of hatchlings that will not voluntarily take pink mice in their first few feedings. therefore, sam, the taking of a f/t pink or live pink is not something an owner will be able to influence, some snakes never convert to f/t, ever.
mice at it night and day, so awaiting pinkies..........Lil has shed and is now a much healthier 16grams, at last is glimmer of light ahead
So now urve got 2 pet mice and waitting pinkies for them to eat, it maybe nature in the wild but these are CB snakes, Hear me out J9 what next what if your other pets if you do wont eat there food you gonna feed them to Each other.
As j9 already said, captive bred or not, it's still instinct. You can't compare other companion animals that have been domesticated for thousands of years to a reptile that is borderline domesticated (some would even say not at all). Some snakes are very difficult to get onto pre-killed rodents, let alone frozen, especially juveniles. Also, I don't understand how the feeding of frozen over live could be any more ethical. It's a choice of safety for the snake in the long run, that is all. A frozen rodent was alive at some point, remember? A life was still taken to feed your snake. Sounds rather hypocritical, if you ask me, to say that one is morally wrong while the other is perfectly fine. And how is one mouse any different from another? Sure, there are various colors and coat patterns, etc, but he purchased them to use as food. I have a pet rat, but that doesn't stop me from feeding rats to my Burmese (though I feed frozen, but if Dublin didn't accept them you'd bet your bottom dollar that I wouldn't let him starve). Just like some people may have a pet cow but they still eat hamburger. Food is food, life is life, and it's all a giant circle. That is that. What about other cultures that would consider your pet cat or dog to be on the menu?
sam42 sam42, have you no other interest on this forum except my problems? very odd and getting irritating. All the meat you eat was alive and was slaughtered and butchered. Unless you are a vegan you have no moral high ground here, do you feed your snake carrots? If you really own any snakes you will know that live pinks or fuzzies are a common resort to entice difficult feeders. If you knew me, you would know that all my animals are well cared for, but I spent my early childhood on a farm, we ate rabbits my Dad shot, chickens we had known from hatching and pigs that had been trained to come in from the field when we called them. I believe to utilise an animal for food, fur or meat, or as a companion, entails a moral responsability to care for it properly, and to dispatch it quickly and efficiently. Once again. thanks DragonCharm, it is the support of real herpers like yourself that is keeping Lil and I going. As soon as i get a pink to try, will be updating on progress. J9
