Switching snakes from live

All Reptiles
6

As most others have said, hatchlings are tough. It’s also a pain to have to try to understand if it just doesn’t want f/t or if it just doesn’t want to eat at all. They all have their own little schedules you have to work around. One pops out of the egg trying to eat f/t and another just stares at you for a whole month.

Everyone usually has their own little “feed the hatchlings” rituals. I don’t use pinkies and try to find very small mice because I think the fur helps. Others probably do the opposite. Some try to avoid mice entirely so they don’t accidentally make a mouser (feeding a full sized adult female on only mice is a bad place to be).

If live is an absolute no-can-do for someone I would say they should look beyond ball pythons to other snakes. Colubrids can take a varied diet and there are commercial options like ReptiLinks that don’t look like animals at all. With some work you can get other pythons on ReptiLinks.

Edit: just for the record I’m Team f/t with currently 20 snakes all on f/t.

3 Likes
7

I hope to breed balls, and actually have one who was locked for 23 hours, and I am trying to learn about feeding the babies. I really want to feed frozen as it’s much easier for me to buy and keep on hand. I only have two female mice so I know they couldn’t keep up and my supplier is an hour away. Technically it could work but I would definitely have live on standby!

2 Likes
8

Does not even take that much work. I have a bredli and a blackhead that transitioned to links from the first offering

2 Likes
9

Yep. Woma (not too far from blackhead…) do fine, too.

Ball pythons you can train feed but that’s a separate topic.

3 Likes
10

I actually have a handful of balls that take links as well, no extra work required. They are just REALLY food motivated so anything warm on the end of forceps they consider food

2 Likes
11

@john did a great post on this Changing Your Ball Python Over to a Frozen Diet

1 Like
12

I’m gonna be in the same boat as you when it comes to babies. I am going to offer f/t from the start and just learn from there. I am sticking to rats though. Maybe I’ll luck out, ha-ha.

2 Likes
13

It’s a fun but sometimes frustrating journey. I’m not sure there’s a defacto 100% money back guaranteed “right way” but… you’ll never run out of things to try!

Some pop out like Pacman nomnomnomnomnom whether it’s a rat, reptilink, pinky, etc. Some just don’t. Some people swear by ASF scenting. Some swear by “never pinkies” (I’m kind of in that camp)… :woman_shrugging: Try it all. It’s easy to get sucked down into scenarios where you have failure to thrive or a skinny snake - sometimes that’s just what happens but it’s easy to start blaming yourself with “What if I had done something different…?” so might as well surround the room with salt and light some sage if you think that will help you. :slight_smile:

The definite things to avoid are accidentally raising mousers. I am also not a huge fan of braining and honestly do not believe it helps in any way but… :man_shrugging:

1 Like
14

What the hell is ‘braining’ and do I want to know? :woozy_face:

1 Like
15

Probably not but I’ll tell you, anyway.

Some people believe that pythons are zombies, I think, and the smell of brain will elicit a feeding response. You can do it with a small nail or a large hammer. If you look around you’ll see this advice for everything from hatchling ball pythons, various colubrids, boas, and more.

This was one of those ‘rituals’ that people will swear by but I’m pretty sure it emerged back when most everything was wild caught and really difficult to feed. No one knows if the animal just randomly decided that that specific day was lunch time or if the braining somehow helped but… people still try it… :woman_shrugging:

1 Like
16

I always thought the science behind the scent of blood/flesh illicit into a feeding response to be pretty sound. I don’t see why brains specifically would be “more” desireable but there’s a huge amount of blood around the brain of any living thing so…makes sense to me.
@asura Do you doubt it because you tried it extensively and didn’t notice a difference or just general skepticism/ Is that a common opinion now that people doubt it?

I haven’t tried it yet but I only have f/t so idk if it would be as effective anyway.

1 Like
17

Sure, that seems pretty straightforward. In the case of colubrids, etc, that would be opportunistic on carrion, etc, it definitely makes sense. But why would a ball python ever smell brains? It seems to kind of fall apart at that point.

When it comes to f/t and prekilled the prey item is already kind of banged up already so would driving a nail through it really make a huge difference?

Again, in the case of colubrids, I could completely understand how a chicken heart itself rather than a whole prey item could elicit a feeding response because it’s just viscera… but brains?

I have done it quite a few times in the past, I wouldn’t say extensively (probably in the several dozens rather than thousands), but it falls in line with what I said previously:

Depending on when you got into the hobby and what species you’ll find that some just don’t eat (especially wild caught, note the mass import mention). It happened when we were mass importing ball pythons, it happens with short tails, it happens with burmese, etc… and when they were relatively new I think people were just trying literally anything to get them to eat. But they eat when they’re damned well ready. If you brain every mouse and it eats the brained mouse you’ve got 100% rate there - but that’s obviously not science and a very skewed sample. * edit, note below

Does that make sense?

* The skewed sample is mentioned because I really do honestly believe that braining, in general, is a folk remedy akin to blowing smoke in an ear infection, etc.

1 Like
18

I’ve started a hundreds of baby snakes, and I can say that braining works sometimes. I’ve definitely had cases where a stubborn feeder got started on brained pinkies. It is one of my go-to tricks for difficult feeders. It’s not a folk remedy. It does seem to be more effective with colubrids than with boids though.

1 Like
19

That makes sense.

I hear ya, I think the basic predator instinct of preying on the weak if they have any of that instinct I could see the scent of blood still being a turn on.
Point taken tho

20

I’m just not a fan. I’m not trying to tell anyone not to do it… It’s just going to be on my “Desperate Things to Try” list all the way at the bottom under “Play Onward Christian Soldiers”. :stuck_out_tongue:

Colubrids, etc, give it a shot. Ball pythons? Stinky waste of time (for me - you do you).

1 Like
21

It’s only my first year breeding, so my sample size is only 11. But so far I’m 11 for 11 on getting new hatchlings on f/t. I followed someone else’s advice, but I’ll repeat it here since it worked so far for me. Once they take f/t in this process I just put them on the normal schedule with f/t prey only.

  1. No feeding until a few days after first shed
  2. First try: offer f/t pinky rat. (most will refuse it in my experience. 2 out of 11 went f/t right away) If they don’t eat go to the next step.
  3. 4 days later: Those that have never eaten get offered a live fuzzy mouse (must not have developed teeth!) left in overnight. If they eat go to the next step. If they don’t, keep repeating this step until they do.
  4. 4 days later: offer another f/t pinky rat. (I got a lot of takers at this step). If they don’t eat, go on to next step.
  5. 4 days later: offer a live pinky rat left in overnight. Ideally one that’s just starting to get a little fuzz on it. (again, they must not have teeth!) If they eat, go to the next step. If they don’t eat, repeat this step. (So far I’ve not had to go back to the fuzzy mouse step, but eventually I’d consider it if the snake starts losing any weight. The idea is that they only ever eat one mouse in their life, just to get them into the whole eating thing. But obviously it’s the snake’s health first if that doesn’t work out.)
  6. 4 days later: offer f/t pinky rat. Since by now they’ve eaten at least a couple times, I’d try this step a couple times before going back to a live prey item that I know they will eat. 1 out of the 11 I went back to feed a second live pinky rat before they decided to take the f/t.
5 Likes
22

Hey really well articulated this post will help a lot of newbs like me I wish I could upvote it permanently til I have hatchlings lol :slight_smile: great work

1 Like
23

For those using, or trying to use, strictly frozen thawed, thawing rodents in warm/hot water clearly rinses away the scent that a live rodent would provide. I theorize that frozen thawed issues lie within this observation. “Braining” anything that was frozen and then thawed would clearly unleash scent that water had not washed away.

I strive to provide F/T to my collection, but keep ASF rats available, alive, for contingency. My collection of about 35 snakes is nearly all on F/T, except for two. These two are balls that one, always takes live and randomly accepts F/T, and two, just likes to stop eating at random. A fast. I have a very impressive young adult female ball that was sold because she would not switch to F/T for the previous owner, who now crushes F/T with me because I learned to read her body language and can trick her very quickly.

When I buy babies that refuse to take F/T, I provide a hide (I do use snake racks that serve a similar purpose that hides do) and so far this trick has been perfect for me in getting them to eat. I take hide boxes away when I feel feeding routines have been developed and have had some times where it was too soon, that a hide box was still the extra bit needed to achieve consistent weekly feedings.

Just some observations from my experience.

Some animals just take a little extra time to work with. Once you really establish them, they never let you down.

A few other notes to add:

For stubborn feeders, wait for the animal to actually flick it’s tongue a few times. Ball pythons that are stressed or scared at your sudden movement will freeze, you will either just barely see the tongue come out, or not at all. The animal needs to relax and become curious. All of the stubborn feeders I have dealt with in recent history were not using their tongues at all unless I took the patient approach.

Try to mimick live prey when dangling F/T. The height of a rat of any size dangling from forceps is greater than any random foraging rat approaching a snake in wait. Just think about how many animals have a defense mechanism that is a clear effort to make them appear bigger than they really are. An established feeding snake might not care, but a stubborn feeder might refuse what appears to big to eat. Using your hemos/tweezers to drag the rodent in the bedding towards the snake can help reduce the oversized appearance of one dangling straight in the air.

For now, the last trick I will add is eliciting an impulse strike. Quick movements from side to side (with the snake moving it’s head quickly to follow) often inflicts an impulse strike. These guys are not domesticated. Wild food sources rarely stick around long enough to give snakes a second chance. Quick movements seem to suggest to the snake that it’s “now or never”. I have a couple animals that respond very well to this method. I basically move the rat quickly in a 180° half circle, from eye to eye, maybe 4 inches from their face. More distance if the animal is larger. I suggest this method last for a reason, it takes practice because the snake will miss if you are too fast. Faces smash into glass/tubs/water dishes. Then they lose interest very fast.

Anyway, hope these tricks inspire some of you. I have had a very good success rate switching new animals to F/T with the above.

6 Likes
24

This is why I always use a sandwich bag or something similar to thaw my rodents in. Keeps them from getting in the water.

3 Likes
25

Sorry, but that’s not how that works. It does sound reasonable and washing a rat would surely change its smell but … give it a shot. Washing a rat in warm water is just going to make it stinkier. Plop it on a heat mat or hit it with a hair dryer and all will be made clear. :slight_smile: Give a dripping wet rat to a monitor and they don’t care that you washed it. Give the same rat to a woma python and it’s dinner. Worst case scenario plop it on a heat mat or hit it with a hair dryer for a few seconds and even a human can smell it - the heat will unlock scents still trapped in oils on the rodent. It’s going to take a whole lot of effort and a whole lot of soap to scrub away the scent not to mention you’re still going to have to cover the damaged eye sockets of f/t, hemorrhaged blood vessels in the nose and mouth, etc.

Brain a rodent and you’ll smell something like nasty chicken soup. It definitely drives colubrids and monitors crazy but I honestly don’t believe it makes a difference with pythons. :woman_shrugging:

Alternatives that were suggested all seem like far better advice. You’re 100% on providing a hide and other tricks. I haven’t brained a mouse in a very, very long time and have found strategies like this one much more effective.

Again, if braining works for someone I’m not saying anyone can’t or shouldn’t do it … I’m just saying there are other strategies for me with braining being low on the list.

I do this, too, but mostly so I don’t have a dripping wet rat to carry around. For species on substrate it keeps the substrate from sticking, too.

You can also just paper towel/blow dry but that’s a lot of extra effort.

1 Like