Since I've made additions to my collection I've noticed that certain things that were once easy have now become more difficult. Feeding I'm sure is always at the top of everyones list and I know that the big this is F/T or Live. I'm so far confident in my ability to convert my snakes to F/T. While my collection is still small I have 17 animals all of which are F/T eaters... 7 of which I was told would not eat F/T under any circumstances. I'm sure a lot of my success is from having a smaller collection that I can take more time and care with which makes me wonder if collection size has more to do with this timeless arguement than anything else.



Anyway I've been having some difficulty with my snakes lately and I've chalked it up as mostly normal difficulty with breeding season. This is my first year breeding and I'm not sure what all to expect. This is what I've found. I have two females that I am breeding which were pounding food until a week ago. I have one female that isn't big enough to breed, but I think that she doesn't know this because she went off food about 2 weeks ago, also around this time she hit the famous 1000g mark which also may have something to do with it, although I'm not a firm believer in this theory yet. Lastly I have two males which are old enough to breed. One I am breeding and one I am not. They also have had strange eating patterns lately, but will still eat occasionally.



The one thing I've noticed is that temperature of the F/T food can have some roll in it. While being extremely patient I've found that if I give some rats a little extra warm up time that with the right animal I can get them to strike when they otherwise wouldn't. This brought me to the question... How does everyone heat their TV Dinners for their reptiles. I prefer the let thaw at room temp and heat up with a heat lamp. I feel that warm water would do a better job of heating the rat, but I don't like the idea of wet rats. I've been thinking about trying to make a warmer out of a cooler and heat tape to where you could set it at 98.6 or whatever optimum temp would be and just let the rats sit there. The thing I'm trying figure out is if this would work faster or slower and if it would cause the smaller rats to rot quicker. If you've ever forgot a rat pup under a heat lamp for 45min or so you know what I'm talking about.



Anyway has anyone tried this I'm wondering and if so... How did it work?
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