Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm having a problem I can't seem to find any information on. Two of my snakes, a Texas Rat and California King, go mostly off of feed during the winter. I battled with them both last year and tried putting them on 16-hour light cycles and ensuring good temperature gradients from one end of each tank to the other but nothing seemed to convince them it was anything but the dead of winter. I discovered this year that they both do accept food BUT, it has to be live, and it has to be tiny. My 4-foot california king will only take mouse fuzzies and my 5-foot texas rat will only take mouse hoppers. It's ridiculous watching an adult kingsnake just lay there and inhale a pile of mouse fuzzies. Have any of you witnessed this trend in winter? Do any of you have a decent explanation? I understand fully well why some snakes do not wish to eat during the winter months but why fuzzies only?

Thanks

"I understand fully well why some snakes do not wish to eat during the winter months but why fuzzies only?"

It is just nature's way of ensuring they do not regurgitate if winter conditions should quickly become colder for whatever reason, and it is MUCH safer for the snakes to behave this way naturally. Even though YOU know it won't be getting colder in the controlled artificial environment, the snake has been "hard-wired" for this behavior for countless millenium.

Sometimes nature isn't as easy to fool as we sometimes think..LOL!

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

Thanks, that makes sense to me. It's just so damned expensive and annoying to be buying like 10 live fuzzies/hoppers a week. I really should just stick them in a cold closet or something for the season but I'm stubborn. Maybe it's time for me to start breeding my own mice. What do you think -- a male and 2 or 3 females in one of my spare tanks? I really hate the smell of mouse colonies -- maybe I can rig an exhaust fan to flush the air out my window or something which will of course require building a duct system and frame...

Yes, I used to breed many hundreds of mice for my snakes some years ago, but that was when I could dedicate the separate room, and all on my own property. Now that I am living where I am, breeding is totally out of the question now, and yes, it does have a distinct aroma..LOL! An exhaust fan blowing the air outside is what I did too, and you might want to also get an ionic air purifier as well. These will DEFINITELY help with the smell.

I used to have many small laboratory rodent breeder bins for raising them, and with the real small bins(approx 14 x 10), I had one male, and two females. Each adult female would have a litter about once a month. Now in a bigger one, you could put many more females in as appropriately needed for the given space.

In recent years, I have been buying strictly frozen bulk rodents for my animals. It is very affordable, and extremely handy to work with this way. But you could easily do it just fine raising them too.

Good luck with things, whichever way you choose.

~Doug
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"a snake in the grass is a GOOD thing"

I have a cali king that does this. Not just in winter, but will eat well for several weeks, stop for about a month, then require about a half a dozen fuzzies to commence feeding again. He's special. I also have an eastern milk snake that will stop feeding in winter even if temps are warm. Hard wired behavior seems to override temperatures it seems.