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feeding help

B

blasto767

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Hi
I recently picked up 2 50% het albino young ball pythons. They were both captive bred. I purchased them at the tinley park show. They were both supposedly on frozen thawed already. I have them set up in small (seperate)rubbermaid shoe boxes with a water bowl and log hide. Its been almost 3 weeks now and they won't eat for me. I have 2 GTP's and all i do is defrost the rat and dangle it in front of them on tongs and they grab it-but when I do that with these guys all they do is ignore the food or try and escape the rubbermaid. I tried leaving food in overnight with no results(other then a stinky room). I need some ideas
 
What size are they now?
If the seller was dishonest, I could see how they may not be eating f/t if they are only a few weeks old.

Without knowing more about your new animals, I could only advise you to try a rat crawler or hopper mice (live).
I have noticed that my hatchlings will pay 0 attention to p/k prey untill they are close to 2 months old.

Good luck!
 
g

there about 18"-20" long and fat. I bought them from a frozen rodent retailer who produced them. Say i'm going to offer a thawed out rat pup how should it be offered? off tongs? or just leave it in there?
Thanks
Erich
 
I am going to assume (and this could be a mistake) that your snakes are WARM enough, healthy, and not being played with every 15 minutes. This is not a knock against you, but a reminder for others who may read this in the future. Without proper husbandry, eating is not going to happen. But enough about that....

I am not sure how you are thawing, but heating the rodents with a little warm water to raise their body temperatures just about room temp is helpful. Ball pythons hunt in the dark with heat sensors, and a nice warm rodent makes a great target.

About an hour after the room gets naturally dark is the best time to try. Baby balls like to wake up and hunt in the dark when its safe. I also thaw my rodents in the same room as my snakes (the smell of thawing rodents gets them into a feeding frenzy).

It not typical that balls that age will eat frozen thawed left in their enclosure (although it happens), so tongs is probably a must. Take the mouse/rat in the tongs and hold it a couple of inches from the balls snout. Don't shake it or dance it around, instead, SLOWLY simulate the motion of turning a key in a door knob. Left to right and then right to left ... you should see an "interest" from your snake. Tongue flicking and slow movement towards the rodent is what I look for. If you see no interest, try again in an hour or so. If they come out after the rodent, be patient and keep turning back and forth slowly, they will hit it sooner or later.

If that fails, call the guy you bought them from and see how he did it. Duplicating exactly what he did will probably do the trick.

As suggested, if none of that works, a live hopper will get them eating. Those snakes didn't get that size from not eating. You just might have to remind them how much they like it.

Once you teach them what "feeding time" smells like, feels like, and looks like at your house, they will practically jump out of their boxes to eat for you.


Sorry for being so long winded, and good luck ...

Adam
 
thanks

Thanks you for the good response. I will try what you suggested and if that fails give the breeder a call.
Thank You
 
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