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Change substrate, change eating habits?

J

JasonmHorning

New member
So, my little guy has not eaten since thanksgiving... Which, right after he ate last, I gave this 'Lizard litter' white millet substrate, which he seemed to love! He burrowed under and crawled around underneath, (before he just had paper towels) but I could not get him to eat after that. The first week I figured it may have been stress from new surroundings. The second week I started to wonder, but then he went blue... (I also changed him back to paper towels after the second week) so - I figured that even though he has eaten while shedding before, maybe for whatever reason he didn't want to. Today he shed, full and complete in one piece. He pooped as well. So I thought he would be ready for a meal, but he wouldn't have it. I made a quick trip over to the petstore and picked up a live fuzzy. (it was a tad smaller than the frozen ones he has eaten several times) I put it in the cage and felt bad for the little guy - not longer than I got my hand out of there and he attacked the mouse and ate it, pretty quickly. I tried giving him the frozen one again (warmed up) just to see if he would still reject it, and it got his attention again, but as soon as he saw it was dead, he was uninterested... Did changing the substrate bring out the beast in my snake?
 
changing the substrate probably had nothing to do with it, snakes eating habits do sometimes change, is he a wild caught or captive bred? either way, before u reply to this offer him another frozen/thawed and see if he will take it
 
My snake started out eating f/t as a hatchling and then at some point I changed to live(mainly because of laziness and storage issues). After being made aware of the risk of injury to my snake I tried fresh kill last Friday. I had been feeding my snake live mice for two years at least.I was worried about my snake taking it. I put the mouse in the container with my snake. He sniffed around it, but didn't try to eat it. I was sitting there wondering what to do when my little 3 year old in her excitement accidentally nudged the container and WHAM! the mouse was snatched up and eaten. He just wanted to see it move.
 
Are you making the mice very hot, at least 102F? Most of mine are unimpressed with warm mice, but hot mice are gone quickly. And if someone refuses a mouse, I reheat it back up to nice and hot and it is almost always eaten on the second try.
 
I don't know how hot it gets... I put them in water hot as I can get out of the tap for 10 mins. (water heater set on level 6, whatever that means) How do you get yours hot enough that they'll take it?
 
Well, my tap water is a fairly low 120F. I thaw in that until the mouse is pliable and feels hot if I hold it in my hand. For the adults, I dry it a bit with paper towel, for the babies, they just get it wet. A blow drier can really heat up a mouse, too. An infrared thermometer is pretty handy for checking the temp of the mouse till you get a feel for it. They are pretty cheap.
 
Nanci said:
An infrared thermometer is pretty handy for checking the temp of the mouse till you get a feel for it. They are pretty cheap.
Click to expand...

I use the ProExotics PE-1 model (from ProExotics.com or tempgun.com). It's about $25, but it's a great investment!

Oh, have you tried wiggling the f/t around, making it dance/move?
 
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