hatchling wont eat

Hiya

I have recently purchased a snow corn hatchling. The seller assured me that the snake was taking pinkies by the seller and she is a september hatchling. When i give her the pinky she is showing no interest at all. I have tried the pinky head, warming the pinky, putting her in a tub with a pinky.. so far no interest..

I will go through my set up as I know i will be asked this.. the snake is in a plastic petpal container about 12inches x 6 inches in size, on kitchen roll. her tank is heated and has a thermostat. The temperature at the warm end is 84f cool end is 78. I havent held her at all so i dont think its stress relating to me lol

what can i do for her? Im super worried as u can imagine. tube feeding doesnt seem common at all in the uk, has anyone got any suggestions as to what i can do before she gets weak? several people have told me shes too young to help, and i will just have to hope she decides to eat. PLZ someone tell me thats not true!

Emma

I put mine in a small container, with a little bit of paper towel. Put snake and pinky in. Put a vented lid on it securely. I did this a night 11.pm and kept it in dark quiet room. If you just tried to feed wait four to five days and try again. Just have fresh water available.

Good Luck

Not to sound like I am giving a pat answer, but do a search on feeding problems. There are many good suggestions already posted.
I had several hatchlings that were very difficult to start feeding for me, even though they had eaten for the breeder. Each one seemed to respond to something different. Every 5 days I gave something else a try until each one was eating. The last one just started after having only a mouse tail and a pinky head in over 2 months.
While the laws of nature are that not every one will survive, just be patient and persistent until either it eats or ? Of 5 difficult feeders I did not lose one and the last one just had its third meal.
I will add that I ended up feeding the last ones in their viv(a 6 qt sterilite with paper towel substrate) until they had eaten 3 consecutive meals. They seemed less stressed to stay in their own surroundings than to be put into the tub. As they started to eat and became stronger they were introduced to feeding tubs. I also did not handle them except for cleaning until they had started feeding.
Hope that helps a little.
Good luck with your baby.

Like Traci said, there are a variety of things that might work. Each non-feeder is its own special case, it seems like. A search for non-feeder should get quite a few results and a wealth of information.

How long ago did you get it? Although if it was feeding before you bought it, chances are it will eat again. Some just go off feed for no reason and then resume when they feel like it.

My main suggestion would be to attempt to feed it every 5-7 days, like you normally would for a feeding hatchling. New owners always make the mistake of "trying tomorrow" and the next day and the next day. And as dumb as it sounds, you can stress them out every time to the point they associate the food with the stress, and they become fearful of the food. Dumb I know, but snakes aren't known for their surperior intellect.

A well fed hatchling can go nearly 2 months without food. So the chances of it dying of starvation are pretty great, unless it's got a disease or parasite that may hasten that. But even then, its a rarity it seems.

Just leave it alone and let it do it's thing for a few weeks while you try to get it to resume eating.

What has your weather been like in the UK since you got it? Some of my snakes will go off feed in the late Autumn-early Winter months of low sunlight hours because they feel its, hibernating time. Usually an increase in the amount of light in my snake room fixes this. So that may be something to explore as well.

Here are the usual tricks I try in my quest to get a stubborn feeder to eat before declaring it a complete non-feeder:

1. I normally feed live pinks anyway, so I'll try live for 3-4 times before declaring it stubborn. Leaving it overnight each time with the pink.

2. If live doesn't work, I'll try f/t, again leaving it overnight. I'll try this a couple of times before moving on.

As I move on down the line, I move from leaving it in their home tub, to moving them to a small delicup (with airholes) in a dark closet. Sometimes they're just too nervous to eat with people watching and movement and light. Some won't eat in the first few minutes, accept that fact and make allowances for that. Leave it overnight in its small container every feeding until it's feeding consistently.

3. Brained f/t pink. Simply take the tip of a sharp knife and press into the brain case of the pink, then give the head a slight squeeze. A little grey matter comes out. Don't be afraid to do it, it works. =P

4. Stunned, brained live pink. Its still moving a tad, but has the aroma of the brain and fresh blood that some find irresistable.

5. Alternative scenting. Simply rub the pink on a variety of rodents, or "shake and bake" in a bag of soiled bedding. Most f/t mice don't smell like mice after the thawing process, I've found. So making them smell like mice is sometimes all that's needed.

6. Anole lizard scenting. I'm always reluctant to use this method, as snakes can get a taste for the anole scent and it can be a bear to wean them off of it and back onto regular rodents. But anoles are in the natural range of the cornsnake in their native habitat, and are a food source. They're just usually not as healthy as mice and being reptiles, are more likely to pass on parasites to your snake, if the lizard is alive.

I use frozen anoles for my scenting purposes. Just rub the pink over the anole, paying special attention to the mouth and cloacal area. Although my best luck has been with anole saliva. If the anole is dead, simply swab the pink head in the anole's mouth, or if its alive, annoy the anole into biting the pink really good.

7. Some corns just resign themselves to not eating. We will never understand the drive to starve when ample food is available. If you do manage to get them eating, most never really thrive and are piss-poor eaters/growers for life. Nature has a plan for everything, and we're not meant to understand them most times.

If any of my stubborns aren't swayed by any of the above methods, over a month or so from hatching, they're euthanized and fed to my kingsnake. Such individuals do the gene pool no benefit, as poor feeders can be hereditary to an extent.

Hopefully you can get your little one back on food in short order without all of the tips. Just take it feeding day at a time, and hope its just being stubborn. Let us know how it goes. =)

Is there a possibility that the snake is due to shed? I have a couple that will go off food for a couple of weeks before shed, and won't resume eating until they have. If there are shed records see if it's within a week or two's time. Snow's can be difficult to see blue on since they are so light colored to begin with. Babies can shed as often as every three weeks.

hi,

thanks for your replies, I will not try feeding her for another 5 days. I dont wanna stress her, I havent been handling her at all and shes been put in the quietest room. I dont know where i would get live food.. thats something i have never seen for sale here..

I will try everything suggested, where does one buy anole lizards then? I dont even know what that looks like!
bearing in mind that she is a much wanted pet and not a future breeding animals I would wanna do everything possible to keep her from starvation. IF she doesnt respond to being offered food is it possible to assist/ tube feed a young snake. I know i dont have the experience to do this myself but if it was possible i would get a vet to do it. I dont wanna sound like an ignorant newbie, but i just want save the snake!

You can get live pinks from most pet stores, at least around here. While being in the UK, that may be harder to procure than here in the states where we don't have laws governing what we can feed to our pets. If all else fails, buy a very pregnant mouse and you would have food soon enough. I believe the law in the UK is something to the effect if that's all your pet will eat to stay alive, its ok to feed live food.

Anole lizards are little green lizards about 4-6 inches long snout to tip of tail. They're the most ubiquitous cheap pet lizard next to iguanas. If you're unable to find them, you may just try rubbing a pink on any lizard you can find. I've heard of people having success scenting with leopard geckos or other gecko species.



Anoles are relatively cheap and easy to care for. I buy mine in bulk from an online supplier and freeze them for future use. One frozen anole can scent many a pink for years.

See if your local pet store will give you soiled shavings from various rodent species in sandwich bags. Make sure they're labeled to see which one works. T-Rex makes an artificial scent in a bottle that may work for you. Its in a dropper that's called "Lizard Maker" or "Rodent Maker". Personally, I've tried both and neither have worked for me. But its worth a shot if you can find it.

Tube or force feeding is a very stressful event for any snake, and especially so in a hatchling who doesn't want to eat and hasn't eaten for a while. More often the stress of the procedure outweighs any benefit you might gain with the nutrition. I personally wouldn't recommend it if it comes to that. If it was an eating hatchling before you bought it, it may just take some trickery to get it interested in food again.

Sometimes you just have to take a step back and ask yourself: "Why am I putting the animal through this, if it doesn't have the desire or will to live for itself?" Most things we do with pets are pretty selfish. I have no desire to keep a pet around, no matter how much I love it, for my own reasons. When its their time, its their time.

So far it sounds like you're doing things as you should. Quiet locale, not handling, not overly stressing, etc. Hopefully it's appetite picks back up for you. I'll keep my fingers crossed for ya.