wild baby hog

enclosed is a jpeg of my tree climbing hoggie with his good friend.

Originally Posted by softsnow

I happen to disagree with you, cat. First of all, my heat rock is on the bottom of the terrarium, and the sand is built up around it, which does actually warm up the surrounding sand. I have a flat rock that the snake can crawl under, propped up against it, so the snake can, and does, sleep under that.
To the touch, the electric rock is warm, but not hot. In nature, the sun can heat rocks to the point where they are too hot to touch. I don't believe that snakes are so lacking in natural instinct as to actually cook themselves to death by resting or sleeping on a surface that can kill them.
All that aside, the snake still hasn't eaten, however he is still very active and sometimes climbs the branch that is propped up in the terrarium. Last night I got some tadpoles and set up a 'swamp' for them to grow up in. The little anoel and the snake are becoming buddies, although, I think the lizard is still leery of the snake. ;-)

Read ANY good caresheet on snakes.......it will tell you do NOT use a heat rock. Period.

Or, try asking some of the people on here that have SEEN snakes with thermal burns, it's NOT a pretty sight.

The problem with some hotrocks is they do not hold temperature consistently forever and by the time the short out or get WAY too hot you have an injured or dead snake.

I've used them for years, or used to as I only have one left. It's sort of like speeding. You can do it hundreds of times BUT the one time you get caught going over 100mph you will NEVER forget.

It is common knowledge that heat rocks can harm reptiles, and it's well documented in the literature. Besides, it is unnatural for hognoses to burrow to get warm. In the wild they would burrow to escape high heat. Therefore, and overhead heater is much more natural.

Wow, walking up on an eastern Hog in Wisconsin. I should be so lucky!! Good luck with it!

Open a can of tuna and soak the pinky in the juice.
That usually works to elicit a feeding response to get easterns started on rodents.

I'm not a hognose expert, but a few things jumped out at me when I read your post. You mentioned having a white cedar branch in the cage- cedar is toxic to reptiles. Get it out of there and replace it with either a fake branch, or something known to be safe for reptiles. You also never mentioned the temps in the cage. You really need to measure the temps with a good digital thermometer. As someone mentioned, it could easily be too hot, especially with a 60 watt bulb in a tiny little 10 gallon tank. Having the anole in the tank may not be the best idea, either. If the snake hasn't eaten it by now, it probably won't, and it's possible the presence of another animal is stressing it enough to keep it from eating. It's not the best environment for the anole either. They need relatively high humidity and UV light to survive. Keeping it in with the hog is just subjecting it to a slow death.

I have found (at 2 different times) baby hogs in my yard. I have found them to be quite tempermental. I am in Florida, so there is an abundance of toads and frogs here. My 1st baby refused to eat anything period. the next fall I found the 2nd and decided to try a new tactic. I force feed him a small common tree frog. After that, he would readily eat them. I did find that he had trouble catching them until the frogs were tired out. All in all, he did quite well once he realized they were food. I have never had and luck with any other food source. I did a bit of on line research, and there seems to be some concern with pinkies shortening the life span of Eastern Hognoses. Not being a natural food source, they increase the chances of fatty liver disease. I do not know how big a concern that should be, does anybody know?? Being in Florida, toads or available year round, so I just stick to their natural diet.