I breed bloodreds, almost exclusively, in my collection, and I have had exceptional good luck in getting non-feeders to eat. In fact, one of the larger breeders in the nation has sent me his non-feeders in the past so that I can get them to eat for him and then send them back to him. He could get them to eat, obviously, but he doesn't have the time, so he sent them to me.
I say all of that just to let you know...I have tried it all!
Here's what I do in the order I do it:
f/t pinky
f/t pinky brained
f/t pinky washed with soap and water (don't laugh!)
f/t pinky covered in tuna water (just buy the cheap brand of tuna with spring water and drain the water off into a baggie. Then you can freeze the water in the baggie and thaw it out as you need it.)
f/t pinky rubbed on an anole
f/t pinky rubbed in the viscera (the guts) of an anole
f/t pinky with a piece of anole skin on its head
f/t pinky wrapped in the skin of an anole
f/t anole
a live anole
I generally allow a few days to pass between each attempt, stepping up in the process after each refusal. This allows for the hatchling to eat what it wants as soon as possible (ten days without food is a LONG time for a hatchling, and if they go too long, some of them will NEVER eat, even if you find that right recipe for them!), without stressing them too much.
Of course you can try the brown bag trick in each of the steps attempted, if the snake doesn't jump right on the offered food. Some animals just want it to be dark and quiet before they'll eat at all.
A couple of problems for using anoles have to be addressed, though:
First, they're EXPENSIVE!!! So, if you have to use one to get a baby eating, as soon as you can, you are going to want to wean him off of that anole response by going backwards in the process (by this I mean, reducng the amount of anole scent on the food item each feeding until you are simply brushing the pinky against the anole skin, and it is still being taken).
Second, there are some anoles that have come to your petshop having been wild caught (maybe the vast mojority of them, even), and it is becomming more and more common that these anoles have come into contact with pesticides prior to their capture, which, while not fatal to the lizards on the outside of their skin, is fatal to the snake that eats them! I lost a VERY expensive corn hatchling to this problem once.
Anyway...that's the basic process.
The trick is to always try to get the hatchling to eat the cheapest food source you find, so long as it still provides for the health of the snake. That's why I go in the order described above.
In my experience, some 95% of all corn hatchlings will eat somewhere along in that process, but 5% will starve themselves to death. It's not that they can't eat; it's just that I haven't found what they like yet. Unfortunately for them, however, if they have a developed taste for Bavarian Bat pinkies...they're not going to make it.
Hope that helps a bit!
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Darin Chappell
Hillbilly Herps
PO Box 254
Rogersville, MO 65742
