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How do one forcefeed your snake
- Thread starter ROACHMAN
- Start date
well
well it's sorta a long paragraph out of my manual but I guess your corns life could be at stake so here goes my 30 mins worth of typing....
"Force feeding"
Force-feeding is the last desperation step in dealing with a non-feeder,and should only be attempted when all the above steps at voluntary feeding fail. Don't resort to this method too soon though because otherwise healthy neonates can easily go four weeks without eating as long as fresh drinking water is present. The routine is potentially dangerous for a fragile little snake and is stressful on snake and owner alike. Hold the snake as when tease-feeding, but this time leave only its head free. Have a thin metal or plastic rod, such as a slender side of the knitting needle, handy. It the snake refuses to open its mouth, use the rod to carefully pry it open, trying not to damage any teeth. Insert the nose of the tiniest available pinkie, a severed pinkie head, or a severed mouse tail, as deeply as possible, keeping a slight pressure on the rear end of the preyso it's not immediately expelled. A little water or butter will help lubricate the prey so it slides down more easily. Use a round-tipped rod to carefully prod it down into the gullet until it disappears from sight, and then gently massage the food down from the outside for at least a couple more inches. Once there, it'll probably either come back out within a matter of minutes, or settle down further into the stomach and be digested normally.
Food can also be forced into a snake's belly using a plastic hypodermic syringe with a thin flexible tube, such as a humn cathether, affixed to the end in place of a needle. For tiny hatchlings, special three to four inch stainless steel feeding tubes, obtained from veterinary suppliers, may be attached to 10-20cc syringes for the same purpose. FInely ground cat food, or strained meat baby foodmakes suitable mixtures for a couple of fast meals to stimulate a snake's appetite. They may not be completely balanced diets for snakes though and should be thought of only as emergency measures. A 1cc quantity of the formula is enough for one feeding to a baby corn that is 12 inches long.
The "Pinkie Pump" made by BJ Specialties, Boerne, Texas is a custom-made stainless steel syringe that purees and pushes whole dead pinkies down a snakes throat via a short hollow tube built into the end, which is a better diet overall than the fill-in measure while getting a problem snake "back on its feet"
If a baby snake does not start earting voluntarily within a few months, it will probably never be a healthy specimen. A very low percentage of hatchlings, after your best efforts, will persisit in their determination to slowly starve to death. At that point, you may have to accept that it just wasn't in the cards for them to survive. Mother Nature intended for them to be food for other wildlife, and nothing you could do would change it. Consider euthanizing a weak specimen by freezing, accping the loss and moving on to concentrate on the other healthy animals that need your attention. If you persist and manage to raise a severe problem feeder to adulthood and breed it, you may expect that the genes governing its finicky feeding behavior may also be passed, compounding the hassle many fold in future generations."
-kathy love
phew done hope that explains it member try everything else befor you resort to thi make sure you offer smaller food anything
goodluck!
well it's sorta a long paragraph out of my manual but I guess your corns life could be at stake so here goes my 30 mins worth of typing....
"Force feeding"
Force-feeding is the last desperation step in dealing with a non-feeder,and should only be attempted when all the above steps at voluntary feeding fail. Don't resort to this method too soon though because otherwise healthy neonates can easily go four weeks without eating as long as fresh drinking water is present. The routine is potentially dangerous for a fragile little snake and is stressful on snake and owner alike. Hold the snake as when tease-feeding, but this time leave only its head free. Have a thin metal or plastic rod, such as a slender side of the knitting needle, handy. It the snake refuses to open its mouth, use the rod to carefully pry it open, trying not to damage any teeth. Insert the nose of the tiniest available pinkie, a severed pinkie head, or a severed mouse tail, as deeply as possible, keeping a slight pressure on the rear end of the preyso it's not immediately expelled. A little water or butter will help lubricate the prey so it slides down more easily. Use a round-tipped rod to carefully prod it down into the gullet until it disappears from sight, and then gently massage the food down from the outside for at least a couple more inches. Once there, it'll probably either come back out within a matter of minutes, or settle down further into the stomach and be digested normally.
Food can also be forced into a snake's belly using a plastic hypodermic syringe with a thin flexible tube, such as a humn cathether, affixed to the end in place of a needle. For tiny hatchlings, special three to four inch stainless steel feeding tubes, obtained from veterinary suppliers, may be attached to 10-20cc syringes for the same purpose. FInely ground cat food, or strained meat baby foodmakes suitable mixtures for a couple of fast meals to stimulate a snake's appetite. They may not be completely balanced diets for snakes though and should be thought of only as emergency measures. A 1cc quantity of the formula is enough for one feeding to a baby corn that is 12 inches long.
The "Pinkie Pump" made by BJ Specialties, Boerne, Texas is a custom-made stainless steel syringe that purees and pushes whole dead pinkies down a snakes throat via a short hollow tube built into the end, which is a better diet overall than the fill-in measure while getting a problem snake "back on its feet"
If a baby snake does not start earting voluntarily within a few months, it will probably never be a healthy specimen. A very low percentage of hatchlings, after your best efforts, will persisit in their determination to slowly starve to death. At that point, you may have to accept that it just wasn't in the cards for them to survive. Mother Nature intended for them to be food for other wildlife, and nothing you could do would change it. Consider euthanizing a weak specimen by freezing, accping the loss and moving on to concentrate on the other healthy animals that need your attention. If you persist and manage to raise a severe problem feeder to adulthood and breed it, you may expect that the genes governing its finicky feeding behavior may also be passed, compounding the hassle many fold in future generations."
-kathy love
phew done hope that explains it member try everything else befor you resort to thi make sure you offer smaller food anything
goodluck!
Matt L
New member
Roachman,
I'm not a big fan of force feeding. iI have not seen alot of sucess with it! This should be done out of shear desperation. How long has it been since you last feeding? Is this a neonate or older? If a snake has been eating and has now stopped there may be a reason for it, breeding season, temp to low, mouth rot etc.I have had great success with stuborn feeders by placing them in a small container along with live food example:a neonate and a live pinky. All I feed is live so I've never tried it with frozen, but the results may be the same. Hope your snakes OK. Good Luck!
I'm not a big fan of force feeding. iI have not seen alot of sucess with it! This should be done out of shear desperation. How long has it been since you last feeding? Is this a neonate or older? If a snake has been eating and has now stopped there may be a reason for it, breeding season, temp to low, mouth rot etc.I have had great success with stuborn feeders by placing them in a small container along with live food example:a neonate and a live pinky. All I feed is live so I've never tried it with frozen, but the results may be the same. Hope your snakes OK. Good Luck!
forcefeeding... last resort
roachman,
i agree. i wouldn't jump right into forcefeeding. there are many other options before you forcefeed and this may be a problem that is easily remedied in another way. forcefeeding in many cases can do more harm than good to a snake and is very traumatic for the snake. it may help if you describe your snake and the problem you are having.... jim
roachman,
i agree. i wouldn't jump right into forcefeeding. there are many other options before you forcefeed and this may be a problem that is easily remedied in another way. forcefeeding in many cases can do more harm than good to a snake and is very traumatic for the snake. it may help if you describe your snake and the problem you are having.... jim
ROACHMAN
New member
thanx All
i know force feeding is a last desperate route, but my lady does not want to eat , she has not eaten since beginning of march , and the pinkey she ate then was a very small one , she is still very young and has always been a problem feeder, all the previous times i have been down the line with her and she has eaten somewhere alons the way but it seems like she has all together gone on a hunger stike...i have had her for about 6 months and she has only eaten about 3 times , she looks very frail , she laid around in her cage openly while there was hides and was not moving very frequently , and that is why i have decided it is time for a force feed. i have managed to get a small pinkey down but she was not to happy about it , fortunately she is looking a bit healthier now and has not regurgitated it. i hope her next feeding session goes easier , thanx a lot for the advice you guys much appriciated.
i know force feeding is a last desperate route, but my lady does not want to eat , she has not eaten since beginning of march , and the pinkey she ate then was a very small one , she is still very young and has always been a problem feeder, all the previous times i have been down the line with her and she has eaten somewhere alons the way but it seems like she has all together gone on a hunger stike...i have had her for about 6 months and she has only eaten about 3 times , she looks very frail , she laid around in her cage openly while there was hides and was not moving very frequently , and that is why i have decided it is time for a force feed. i have managed to get a small pinkey down but she was not to happy about it , fortunately she is looking a bit healthier now and has not regurgitated it. i hope her next feeding session goes easier , thanx a lot for the advice you guys much appriciated.
Doctor Mike
New member
Glad you were able to get your corn to feed and that she is looking better. For the future, here are 2 other options for feeding non-feeders that weren't discussed above:
[1] ESU Reptile Jump Start from Creative Aquatics, URL
http://www.pohina.com/creative/shop.html
You take this food and smear it inside the mouth of the snake. You'll need someone the snake already knows to hold your snake for you--let them play together for awhile first to calm your snake. You then take a Q-Tip, the plastic stem kind, not the wooden ones, and roll the long side [not the tip of the Q-Tip] up against the tip of the snout, at the lingual notch [the little hole through which the tongue flicks]. Roll it back gently, and the mouth will open. Hold it at the back of the mouth to prop it open. Take another plastic Q-Tip, from which you have first removed the cotton fibers at the end, and use this to gently smear the Jump Start inside the mouth. When done, hold your corn for a few minutes in your warm hands for comforting, and little by little, the food will go down. Your corn gets complete nutrition from this, and it won't be regurgitated. I would do this every day or at least every other day for 10 days to get some good calories and nutrients into your corn--then, try a pinkie.
The best thing about this method is that it is relatively gentle.
[2] Trip to the herp vet for syringe feeding with "AD", sort of a mouse puree´. The vet can check out other aspects of your corn's health at the same time--there could be reasons for the non-feeding that need to be addressed.
Note that neither of these options is nearly as stressful as cramming a pinky down the snake's throat, which was what I thought "force-feeding" was before I looked into it in my early snake days.
Best of health to your lady corn,
Doctor Mike
[1] ESU Reptile Jump Start from Creative Aquatics, URL
http://www.pohina.com/creative/shop.html
You take this food and smear it inside the mouth of the snake. You'll need someone the snake already knows to hold your snake for you--let them play together for awhile first to calm your snake. You then take a Q-Tip, the plastic stem kind, not the wooden ones, and roll the long side [not the tip of the Q-Tip] up against the tip of the snout, at the lingual notch [the little hole through which the tongue flicks]. Roll it back gently, and the mouth will open. Hold it at the back of the mouth to prop it open. Take another plastic Q-Tip, from which you have first removed the cotton fibers at the end, and use this to gently smear the Jump Start inside the mouth. When done, hold your corn for a few minutes in your warm hands for comforting, and little by little, the food will go down. Your corn gets complete nutrition from this, and it won't be regurgitated. I would do this every day or at least every other day for 10 days to get some good calories and nutrients into your corn--then, try a pinkie.
The best thing about this method is that it is relatively gentle.
[2] Trip to the herp vet for syringe feeding with "AD", sort of a mouse puree´. The vet can check out other aspects of your corn's health at the same time--there could be reasons for the non-feeding that need to be addressed.
Note that neither of these options is nearly as stressful as cramming a pinky down the snake's throat, which was what I thought "force-feeding" was before I looked into it in my early snake days.
Best of health to your lady corn,
Doctor Mike
