Reptile & Amphibian Forums

So here's my story. I bought a very young and small California Kingsnake from Petco (1st mistake) who assured me she was eating frozen pinkies once a week. Well it turns out they didn't even have her for a week which I found out down the road. I bought a 3month supply of pinkies which Luna the snake wants nothing to do with. I tried an array of different methods, poking a hole in the mouses head and squeezing out brain juice (mmmmm), putting her in a small box with the leaking rodent. I tried over and over until it had been about a month since she had eaten. So after calling every single local pet store for a live pinkie, I had to drive down to Denver (1.5 hrs away) to buy her a live one. Well, the feeding problem is solved. She loves live ones. My problem is that it is a 3 hour trip to buy her a pinkie and lots of gas $. I really couldn't stomach breeding mice and don't think logistically that would work anyway since pinkies grow into fuzzies quicker than she'll eat them. So,anyone know of live pinkies being shipped or have any other ideas? I really want her to eat frozen pinkies but she refuses... How long is too long to let her go without food since she refuses the dead ones?

No problem, if your conditions are right(wrong conditions are the MAIN source of feeding problems) Then after a few live pinks, most(90%plus) normally switch over to frozen.

Also, if your conditions are right, a king will outgrow pinks within a month or so. So buying a longterm supply of pinks is based on having poor conditions that cause your snake to not grow properly. Cheers

Something that often works well on snakes that have a preference for live pinks is to.......wait until the snake is coiled up in it's hide box(which it should have anyway), then take a f/t pinky
that's been slightly warmed to approximate a natural rodent temp., then very slowly and carefully take the lid off the enclosure(so the snake doesn't notice)and twitch the pinky with a long pair of tweezers(or something similar) directly at the entrance of the hide box. This will make the snake think that the pinky wandered up to the hide, and usually doesn't give the snake alot of time to check it out and become disinterested, as this is how they ambush prey in the wild. I've had this technique work on many picky feeders in the past.

~Doug

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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

I have 3 Kings, an Eastern Milk and a Yellow Anaconda. All 5 of these are usually little piglets that would eat daily if we fed them. But we started having a problem with a couple being finicky.

Normally, we would thaw our mice/rats in a baggie, but as the rats got bigger, we started to just thaw them in the water without the bag. That is when we started having picky eaters. We went back to thawing in bags. The idea being that thawing in the water, without a bag, allowed the scent of the animal to wash off, so the snake wasn't getting interested. Since then things are much more normal at feeding time.

So, if you are thawing 'wet', try thawing 'dry' to preserve the scent.

Yeah,....I have ALWAYS let mice thaw out naturally, and others sometimes thaw-out in the bag under warm water, but I also think it would be VERY counter-productive to soak the prey itself in water!, that would DEFINITELY disrupt the natural scent of the rodent!

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

Doug,

I have been thawing out rodents all my life and have never had a problem with snakes not taking them. This has just been my experience.

How are your hondos from Daytona?

Billy
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Genesis 1:1

They are doing just fine, thanks!

~Doug
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"Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open mouth and remove any doubt!"

First make sure she is really hungry. Then give her a tiny live pinky which she should gobble up. Then a few seconds after she gets it down offer her the froze/thawed one. She should still be in hyper feeding mode and go for the F/T. Once or twice like that and you should be good to go.

Also, where are you? I live outside boulder and know a few people in CO that breed mice.

I'm in Vail...anyone close by? I have another friend with a snake goin through the same thing.

That sounds like a really good way to do it. I think she's about super hungry now and I was planning on figuring out getting her fed this weekend so I will try that. Not thawing them wet, pokin a hole in their heads and giving it to her after she eats a little live one. Thanks for the tips, I was beginning to feel a little hopeless.