I took my adult regal ringneck snake out of hibernation last week, slowly started to bring her temps up by switching her enclosure from room to room. I offered her food a couple days after he was at about 75-80 degrees, just seemed like a lost cause. She was refusing to eat f/t once again, had this problem last year... And finding snakes under a foot of snow is kind of difficult lol. After offering her a garter snake with no luck at all.... I decided to switch her enclosure up a bit (for some weird a$$ reason she doesn't do well on newspaper). I gave her 3-4 inches of aspen to burrow in, a waterbowl and a pop tart container as a hide box. 
After the first day she had multiple tunnels in there... Was pretty crazy.
The next day I offered her a f/t corn snake. Left it in overnight... Nothing. Figured.
I left her alone yesterday, get used to the new home...
Today she was out roaming, and I just had to try something. Thawed out a louisiana milk snake and a pinky. Shoved the pinky's head into the milks mouth to see if I could entice the regal with the saliva. Seemed interested, didn't take. After fiddling with the mouse for 10 minutes, I decided to just try the milk...
Now I was skeptical about this, because I have offered her scarlet kingsnakes before, and she seemed incredibly terrified of anything that resembled a coral snake. Well she didn't strike at the milk either, so I grabbed the milk and forced it's head into the pop tart container where the regal was hiding, the regal probably thought it was being chased, and it bit the milk. Self defense maybe? Who knows. I left it alone for a while, 20 minutes later it was out roaming. Damn. lol
So I grabbed the milk again and repeatedly started chasing the regal with it (note, the regal was not getting stressed out by this, seemed to be having fun lol) it would go into a tunnel, come out the other side stare the milk, go down, come back from another one, etc. etc. I felt like giving up after 5 minutes of this BS lol. But she seemed too much interested in it.
Finally after lord knows how long, I got her to grab the milk's head. She's been trying to eat it for about an hour now... Quite the large meal. The milk is about 16" and by no means skinny, she was my best eater before dying last summer and easily took 3-6 mice a meal. The regal on the other hand is only about 21" and very skinny due to not eating for a while.
I got some pics... Who knows when they'll be up. Right now she swallowed 1/8 of the snake... Which is good, because one of my main concerns was it getting past the milk's head.
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Mike
KingPin Reptiles Inc.
www.freewebs.com/mikesnake
www.freewebs.com/badyear2005
