Only eats fuzzies?

Hey, I have a question from those who frequent this forum...

I have a male cal king '01, he bred successfully last year, but was off his food for most of the breeding season. I had a hard time getting him to eat last fall, and was concerned about brumating him. I only brumated him for a short period of time (six weeks) before I decided to pull him out of brumation due to his thin-ness. Now I've been trying to fatten him up before taking the females out of brumation, but he's still not very hungry. One day, in desperation, after trying live, frozen thawed, stunned, and freshly killed adult mice, I was feeding fuzzies and pinkies to some of my younger snakes, but had half a dozen live fuzzies left over due to a large number of snakes that were in shed. Rather than take them back to the mouse room, I just put the entire container in with my cal king. He ate them down like they were popcorn and was looking for more. But didn't/wouldn't eat a full grown mouse. I've been feeding him a "bucket full of fuzzies" every other week for some time now, in between offering him adult mice but he won't eat anything but fuzzies. Anyone else experienced this? Since I raise my own mice, it's not too much of a hassle, but I hate to feed him six to a dozen mice when only ONE adult would give him the same meal. Any suggestions, or anyone with a similar problem? This guy is over 4 feet long and is large enough to eat small rats. Oh, and I've even offered him fuzzy rats, but he refuses those too.

I've had the same thing happen with both males and females. They were good mouse eaters, went off their feed and then would eat nothing but live fuzzies. I have no explainations for it. I've got siblings to these same animals that still take mice just fine and have had others that went off mice and onto fuzzies and then back to mice.

I work with a lot of cal kings as well as some corns and milks and they're, the kings, the only ones I've had this happen with. I did have some pyros that went of fresh killed or FT and would not eat anything but live mice a couple of years ago. Most of my finicky snakes have been females.

Sorry I don't have any answers but if I come up with any I'll be sure to let you know. I just wanted to let you know you weren't alone in the weird feeding habits of cal kings.

Wes Pollock

Thanks for at least telling me I'm not alone. He's such a funny snake, used to eat adult mice with gusto. Hubby says he's just lazy, prefers fuzzies as they aren't as much work. Just a good thing I have a plentiful supply of HUGE fuzzies for him to chow down on.