I definitly need some advice;
We got our first hognose recently, and he’s been doing amazing. He’s quite possibly the most chill and friendly snake i’ve ever had. He’s always very eager to come out in the mornings. He’s never hissed, puffed up, bluffed or anything. Even his previous owner said they’d never seen him do any of that.
We’ve done our best not to handle him since we got him about a week and a half ago because we wanted to adjust and eat. I’ll admit we’ve probably handled him more than we should have.
His previous owner said he declined a feeding before we got him and said he was ‘fussy’ but normally eats just fine and usually just catches the scent and calmly eats without even striking. They said they assumed it was just an off day or something.
Today we attempted to feed him some f/t fuzzies that he came with, and he was /not/ having it. He was bluffing, hissing, puffing up, and actively shrinking away from the fuzzy. We even sat it down, and he just ignored it after that and slithered over it/past it.
We thought maybe the feeder was bad, so we tried a pinky we had for another snake, and he stared at it for a minute, thought about it, and then had the exact same reaction. He would approach it if I sat it down, but just ignore it afterwards.
We chopped it up to him being afraid of it somehow? But honestly we arnt sure what prompted the reaction. We know hognoses will hunger strike, and are notorious for being difficult eaters. But this was alarming to say the least since he hadn’t even shown that sort of behavior.
