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Ok, today was an interesting day. All of the holdbacks ate with no issues (no surprise there). T2 ate his anole-scented pinkie again. I think we can call this consistent. T3 ate both the anole and the pinkie, which is a first. Next week, I will offer T3 just the scented pinkie and see what happens. T1 quite specifically eschewed the pinkie, as it was removed from the bottle cap and discarded to the side, but did eat the anole, so there's that.
Of the six "pinkie eaters," 2 of the 3 that ate unscented last week ate their unscented pinkie this week, but one did not. I will offer this one another unscented next week in the hopes that this week was just a fluke, but can always go back to scenting for this one. The other 3 "pinkie eaters" did not eat their unscented pinkies, and will be put back on scented.
Here's where it gets really interesting. Because I counted my pinkies poorly, I thawed more than I originally planned, so rather than refreeze or discard, I figured I would just feed the entire non-holdback group scented pinkies. SIX of the eight ate their scented pinkies. This is a drastic increase, and only one of these had ever eaten a pinkie before, and had been so unreliable with it that he had been moved back to the non-pinkie eating group. All of these guys had been offered pinkies every few weeks to see if they would take them, and five of the six never did before. I have to assume, for this reason, that something I did differently this week helped the acceptance ratio, as all six just deciding at the same moment to take pinkies is a bit unlikely. The only thing that I can think of is that instead of scenting the pinkies with chick thighs, I also (mostly out of laziness) threw a bunch of chick heads that I feed to various yearling corns into the same cup before stirring it all up for scenting. I know that braining a pinkie can often induce a feeding response in an otherwise unreceptive snake, so I'm wondering if the fluids/scent from the chick heads was a more effective scenting method for the more stubborn non-holdbacks. I will continue to use chick heads as a scenting method and see if this acceptance rate continues. The really great news here is that while the numbers for the groups have been largely steady over time, with the occasional one or two changing up to a different group, they have changed over the past couple of weeks as such:
Previous Current
Holdbacks 9 9
Unscented Pinkie Eaters 0 3
Scented Pinkie Eaters 6 13
Anole eaters 3 1
Non-Holdback thigh-eaters 8 2
Obviously, I'm assuming that these numbers will hold, but there has clearly been a drastic increase in pinkie eating from both the bird-eaters and anole-eaters in the last few weeks. I'm not sure if there is some sort of behavioral shift that occurs around this point (roughly the 3-4 month mark) or if I'm just getting better at scenting and feeding, but either way, this is good news.
Also, as a bonus, one of the two non-holdbacks that refused the scented pinkie was looking particularly good due to a recent shed, so I snapped a few pictures and figured I'd share them. He musked me pretty good, but there were no attempts at strikes, so it wasn't too bad of an ordeal. Notice the black facial markings that are starting to come in, as well as the continued differentiation of the scale colors further down the body. I'm really pleased with how these guys are progressing.
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