The key to pyros is, moisture. Nearly all pyros I have seen in captivity are in a state of chronic dehydration. Particularly babies.
Years ago, I produced generations upon generations of pyros, Plus studied them in the field. I sort of recieved the reputation of a local wild and captive pyro expert. I am not bragging, I am saying that to clarify the above.
Baby snakes are massively out of balance. They have a high surface to mass ratio. This is improved with size. As they grow, mass to surface increases greatly. This is why you rarely see baby pyros out and about. During the hatching season in nature, there are literally thousands of babie pyros in a few acres, but you do not see them. They cannot afford to expose themselves to air.
I bring this up because it directly effects the feeding responce and abilities of pyros(many snakes)
As an experiment. I tested something. Again years ago. A friend and I dicussed snakes and drinking water. The real fact in nature(here in ariz) is, most individual snakes do not normally drink water, not because they will not drink, but more because there is none to drink. In many cases, maybe only a couple times a year will there be drinking water. So they control their fluid levels by not loosing moisture thru their skin and gaining fluid thru their prey. Common with desert animals of all sorts, including some mammals.
Back to the experiment, I attempted to raise a number of pyros without ever offerring drinking water. I succeeded. But to my amazement, I also learned other things. When kept properly hydrated, they not only fed and digested prey better, but they acted like normal snakes, they would feed on anything, as in not picky. In this case it relates to captivity well, they ate pinkies(or any dang thing) from day one, without hesitation. They grew like rockets and had firm stools. Now this may seem funny but across the board, captive stools are of poor quality compared to wild stools. Please think about this.
The key to understanding how they do this is to understand humidity. In most cases in captivity, humidity is actually wet. We add water or wetness instead of humidity. In nature, our snakes do not like wet, they avoid it. They seek, dry and humid. This dry and humid is something of importance. In nature, our kingsnakes do not live in areas that are wet, but instead dry and humid.
Much like temps, snakes from the desert or not, use a range of humidity. Not a set humidity. So we see wild snakes constantly choosing different temps, we also see them constantly choosing different humidities.
The key to your non feeding pyro is, give it the proper(things it understands in its language) choices. Not heat, not wetness, but a range of temps and dryness and humidity.
Lastly, this is not so easy to do. In captivity, the concept of dry and humid is very very odd. How does that occur. In nature, snakes choose areas that are well drained. The water or wetness passes through the areas they live in, not staying in those areas. Humidity passes down when it rains, and up with it doesn't. For you field guys, AC catches humidity instead of loosing it to the air. Once AC drys out, snakes will no longer use it. No matter what the temps are.
Now consider, many people use a moisture box, but that is wetness. Unless you use something like moss and wring out the wetness, and it must be done several times a day.
The key in captivity is using water and seperating it from where the snakes live and most importantly not trapping the humidity causing it to return to being water. But remember the AC. Its easy. Cheers
