I have dealt with MANY problematic feeders ranging from baby copperheads to baby bamboo vipers and everything in between (we love raising baby venomous snakes at our facility!). In most cases, just exercising a lot of patience is your best "trick". But, with that being said, here's a few things that we have done with fairly good success (relative to baby copperheads):

Sometimes, you have to get them kick started on live lizards; not a great thing, but you do what you have to do. Small anolis (brown) work fairly well as do the smaller species of skink and scleropis. You can quickly graduate to scenting by keeping some frozen lizards in a ziplock bag, or, make a "lizard shake" by blending a lizard (gross but like I said, you do what you have to do) that is kept frozen (like ice cubes) and when its feeding time, you take a little piece of the frozen lizard shake and smear it all over a f/t pink...many copperheads will find this irresistable. Have your tried placing the copperhead in a small plastic container (just large enough to allow the snake to loosely coil) and place a f/t and perhaps warmed up pinkie with its brain exposed? This also works quite well. Let me know if these work.

Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center
Lake Forest, IL

>>I know this question gets asked a lot, so sorry ahead of time. I have a baby copperhead that will just not eat. I think I've tried every trick in the book, but I'm hoping someone might have something else up their sleeve. Any unusual scenting ideas or anything like that?
>>Thanks,
>>Will
-----
Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, IL

[ Hide Replies ]

• feeding trouble.... - throatoyster, Mon Feb 7 18:10:52 2005
• RE: feeding trouble.... - Carmichael, Mon Feb 7 18:37:13 2005
• Rob your awesome! np - joeysgreen, Tue Feb 8 06:16:34 2005
• he ate! - throatoyster, Wed Feb 9 17:20:12 2005
• RE: feeding trouble.... - guttersnacks, Tue Feb 8 23:22:08 2005