Cupping is great, but it has one drawback. You have to handle the snake to put it in the cup. If the snake is really defensive, that will throw off the feeding response. One of the main reasons everyone usually suggests that you not bother the snake for the first few days. Cupping works 98% of the time though.

Lots of ways to help, but here are your main points and most have already been suggested probably.

1. Increase the snakes security. Smaller cage, opaque walls, or just cover the cage up. Light to no traffic, no handling, no noise, no vibrations.
2. Increase heat to increase the snakes appetite. Double edged sword here, because the snakes metabilism will increase causing the snake to have less time to eat before it becomes dangerously weak. 8 weeks old isn't a huge danger signal yet. I've had babies go up to 3-4 months before they started eating. The bigger the baby the longer it can go without food. You describe yours as skinny, so I would try to get it to eat within the next 3 weeks tops. As sad as it is to say, there is a small percentage of babies that will never eat, regardless of what you do. Very small percentage though. Kenyans at least are almost as good as eaters as burmese pythons
3. The right food: Needs to be the right size. In this case I would go with the absolutely smallest live pinky you can find. You do NOT want to trigger a defensive response. Any pinky older than 24hrs should be avoided if possible (not always easy).
4. Place the food in the container the the least amount of fuss. Do not disturb the snake if you can help it.
5. If the first pinky you place in the container is refused, brain it and return it to the container for another night.

Once those steps are done and its still not eating there are other tricks to try. Scenting, reverse scenting, braining, lots and lots of tricks.
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Travis Rose
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