>>Thanks for additional info. I fed today the same way as before and had the same results.I only fed two altera but I went two for two and one of them has been the difficult one of the bunch. I'm not sure if I am scenting the rats or just masking the rat smell. I can't wait to try it on stubborn hatchlings later this year. I am also thinking of other ways to try it. I am curious if slugs from an infertale clutch could be blended and frozen for use with hatchlings later.Just a thought, Scott.

A couple thoughts:

1) for convenience' sake, if nothing else, i'd try to wean the snakes off scented as soon as possible. It's a means to an end, not the end itself. So next feeding, I'd offer non-scented first; if they don't take it, then offer scented for a couple more feedings, then try unscented again.

2) I don't think scenting snake food with snake egg scent is a good idea. Some female lampropeltis eat their eggs after they lay them (I think someone posted photo evidence last year of what a few of us had hypothesized for several years, to explain the phenomenon of obviously gravid females who start slowly "deflating". The revelation: They did lay, then ate their eggs so had the same body mass, which they gradually lost as they digested and defecated the egg-meals. So they "deflated" without ever having been observed to lay. It'd be easy to not notice the "egg mass" had moved from close to the vent to closer to more in the middle of the animal). It may be a remote risk, but anything that might cause them to associate snake egg and "food item" probably should be avoided.

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