The bottom line is, some snakes are born healthy and can thrive either in the wild or captivity while others cannot. The good news is, hognose are a species that generally do quite well in captivity, but obviously there are a few out there that challenge us sometimes leaving us wondering what it is we might be doing wrong, but the absolute truth is, not every hatchling that is born is going to be 100% perfect healthwise and it has absolutely nothing to do with husbandry, some are just defective whether it's genetic or caused by external environmental issues such as incorrect incubation temps or several other factors.

I'm a bit disappointed in Gregg's statement "There is no such thing as a "problem snake".". Well, that's a completely false statement and he actually knows this to be true, not on a massive scale but definitely with specific individuals that don't adhere to the "program".

Yes, husbandry issues can be blamed for a lot of different problems, especially when it comes to utilizing generalized care for the masses while there's those few individuals that require something completely different, fine tuned just for them. This is where we as keepers can fail the individual if we are not observant or willing to alter our husbandry to fit the needs of the individual.

For example, I am one of the very few breeders that will take months, and I'm talking up to 6 months, to establish non-eating hognose. Most of my peers will give up on individuals within a month and just focus on the masses, some citing that they believe there's something wrong with those snakes and that their eating behaviours are faulty or even genetic in nature. This is a complete myth! Some animals just require different triggers to get them to respond.

Now, having said that, I don't criticize nor condemn my peers for culling non-instantly-eating hognose as I understand their reasons for not wanting to spend the time and energy it takes for a single individual, especially when they are working with hundreds of hatchlings that will readily eat without any intervention, it's simply the path of least resistance and it basically comes down to trying to run their business operations as smoothly as possible. The thing that frustrates me is their fallacious excuses for culling these individuals, blaming made-up myths as being the cause for these animals not instantly wanting to eat whatever it is we're offering them.

Case in point...

I hatched out a single Amel male from a het to het pairing from a clutch of 8 eggs. All 7 of his siblings pretty much ate f/t pinkies within a month, but not this little guy. He went 2 months without eating before I decided to intervene and forcefeed him using a gavage feeding needle with beef baby food. Sometimes this can kick start the digestive system with the hopes that the snake will willfully eat on it's own the next time or two. Well, this didn't happen with this guy. 2 weeks went by with no interest in mice, so I pushed some more baby food in him, and still no reaction.

One important thing to note here is that all this while, he was never really active, he simply just layed coiled up the majority of the time.

So I waited another month and nothing. At this point, it had been about 3 1/2 months of offering him f/t pinks, live pinks, scented pinks (both live and f/t) and even water misted pinks, at this point nothing was working, he simply wasn't interested in anything. So I took away his water bowl for a week and a half and let him get good and thirsty. Well, his next offering was another water misted f/t pinky and this time he was so thirsty he started drinking feverishly off of the pinky and while watching him, I could see that he really seemed awkward opening his mouth, like he didn't know to open his mouth, he was simply drinking through the tongue gap in his jaw, but this time he was realizing that he needed to open his mouth to actually start chewing on the pinky. This took about 30 minutes before he actually opened his mouth wide enough to start feeding on the pinky, but then I noticed that instead of the normal "chewing" method that snakes do to swallow their prey, he was moving his jaw like he was still drinking which obviously made this very difficult for him to swallow the pinky with any ease. It actually took him another 30 minutes to swallow the pinky but he finally did it, he ate on his own! I was so excited!

So I figured that he would willingly eat again by next week. Well, this did not happen, in fact, he refused food for 3 weeks, then he turned blue, shed and a whole month had passed since he had eaten. Needless to say, I was extremely worried that he would resume his non-eating stance, but I was wrong! After he shed, he resumed eating, although it took him a good 2 weeks of feeding to finally master the normal technique of swallowing his food, but he did figure it out. After 5 months of patiently working with him, he finally ate on his own and now he's one of my more active hogs and an extremely aggressive eater! A once shy non-active non-eating snake that now readily comes up to me and will eat off of the tongs regular dry f/t pinkies. I honestly believe that if this individual were in any of my peers' collection, he would have perished within a month, 2 max simply because he would have been "diagnosed" as a problem feeder and not worth the time and effort to establish.

Here's my little Amel. I'm very proud of him for overcoming his eating disorder!


That's one of my many success stories for dealing with problem eaters and it had nothing to do so much with generalized husbandry so much as it had to do with patience and effort in working with the rogue individual that had diffculty learning adapt in captivity.

However, there are those individuals that simply have other issues that cannot be remedied no matter how hard you work with them. I had a Pink Pastel female that I purchased as a hatchling and raised for about 4 years. She was a problem eater, eating only once every 2-6 months with the occasional regurges occuring about every 3rd or 4th feeding. Obviously she was a stunted snake, only weighing about 150 grams after 3 years while hogs the same age or younger than her were already pushing or far past 300 grams. Well, one day out of the blue, almost overnight, she developed this huge bulge in her mid-section, about the size of an egg. I was a bit perplexed by this as I never bred her but I thought perhaps that she was just going through an egg producing cycle and was going to pass an infertile slug, so I just kept an eye on her. Well, after 4 or 5 days, she simply keeled over and died with this bulge still in her. So I decided to perform an autopsy and see what this bulge was. I was amazed to discover that it wasn't an egg but a tumor. Included below are links to 2 pictures showing the removal and dissection of the tumor, it's very graphic, so don't open it if such things are found to be disturbing.

***WARNING GRAPHIC DISSECTION PICTURES***
Dissection picture 1
Dissection picture 2

Obviously, this individual had physical issues that were outside and beyond any issues with husbandry. In fact, a lot of us believe that some of the original Pink Pastel lines might have some genetic issues with them and several of my peers, including myself, consider the Pink Pastel gene to have certain genetic deficiencies as many of us have had significant issues with this specific morph but we are trying to weed out these problems by selective outcrossing and we are now starting to see a strengthening of the Pink Pastel morph from some of the clutches we've been hatching out. So there is hope!

My point in writing all of this out is, there can be many factors that can contribute to the success or failure of any particular individual whether it's due to husbandry issues or other issues with the animal. Obviously, husbandry issues we can usually correct while other issues outside of husbandry we cannot such as behaviours or physical impairments. Perhaps you are doing everything in your power to offer your particular problem animal the best husbandry you can and it's got other issues that are outside the realm of your knowledge or anybody else for that matter. Then again, it might be one of those finicky animals that simply require a lot of fine tuning outside the normal scope of husbandry that you are offering your other animals.

The bottom line is, don't give up and even with terminal animals, use them as a learning experience so that you can refine your understanding and techniques to apply to the next problematic animal which might apply or yet offer you an entirely different set of problems to figure out and learn from.

Good luck!
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Troy Rexroth
Rextiles

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