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Non-feeders feeding!!!

toxiclight

toxiclight

Artz and Snakez
We had three non-feeders out of the clutch of 15 babies. Two of them I wasn't too worried about, as they were two of the biggest in the clutch, and were visibly drinking and leaving little poos.

One of them finally ate the last time we fed, and the other looked interested but not quite interested enough to eat.

The third? Was a 5-gram blizzard when she came out, and she seemed to be shrinking away to nothing. When we looked at her yesterday, she looked almost sunk-in and was going downhill. I ran through the repertoire of tricks to get her to eat, but she wanted nothing to do with anything.

We had talked briefly yesterday with the person who bought the rest of the hatchlings. He breeds the mice for his store, and offered to take her home and try her with a fresh-from-the-mama red. We were going to give her to him sometime this week.

Since we were feeding today anyway, I superheated a head (because I wasn't sure if she could eat a whole pink at this point) My bf suggested giving her both the head and the body and see if maybe just the body would tempt her if the head wouldn't. We did the same thing with our other non-feeder. Decapitated a pink, but put both super hot parts in.

And they both ate!! I am quite honestly beside myself with happiness now :) I don't think the little blizzard is out of the woods yet, because she's absolutely tiny...but she's also one of the feistiest hatchlings we had, and I really want her to thrive.
 
Don't forget boiled and Ivory soaked. I've had VERY good luck with both those this year.

A five gram hatchling is capable of swallowing a whole red (day old pink) if it wants to. I might feed those little guys again in just two or three days- the ones that took heads. See if they'll take heads again.
 
Nanci, I'd planned to buy some Ivory tomorrow at the store if super-hot pinks didn't work (I used boiling water on them this time, which is hopefully what kick-started them)

I wasn't sure about feeding them sooner than five days...I didn't want to stress them too much by trying too frequently, but I trust your advice (since I avidly followed your thread about getting your non-feeders to eat, and was going down the list of tricks you'd tried) and I'll try them again in three days.
 
Well- I have 80 baby snakes in my bedroom, and they are out and staring at me two days after feeding at the latest- often the next day! And I'm feeding slightly larger than diameter pinks. There are a good number of water bowl poppers so I know they've digested! I generally feed at a 5 day interval, sometimes four or six to move the day to allow for travel. With a snake who is not eating pinks, who is being maintained on mouse tails, a five day feeding schedule will _barely_ maintain the baby's weight, and it usually drops very gradually. (I only let the baby refuse two meals before starting tails. They can hold out quite a long time without food, but I haven't found that simply being "hungry enough" forces them to start feeding, so I'm not going to watch them waste away when they can quite easily be maintained, yet can still be offered the chance to feed before getting their mouse tail).
 
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