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Since I've made additions to my collection I've noticed that certain things that were once easy have now become more difficult. Feeding I'm sure is always at the top of everyones list and I know that the big this is F/T or Live. I'm so far confident in my ability to convert my snakes to F/T. While my collection is still small I have 17 animals all of which are F/T eaters... 7 of which I was told would not eat F/T under any circumstances. I'm sure a lot of my success is from having a smaller collection that I can take more time and care with which makes me wonder if collection size has more to do with this timeless arguement than anything else.

Anyway I've been having some difficulty with my snakes lately and I've chalked it up as mostly normal difficulty with breeding season. This is my first year breeding and I'm not sure what all to expect. This is what I've found. I have two females that I am breeding which were pounding food until a week ago. I have one female that isn't big enough to breed, but I think that she doesn't know this because she went off food about 2 weeks ago, also around this time she hit the famous 1000g mark which also may have something to do with it, although I'm not a firm believer in this theory yet. Lastly I have two males which are old enough to breed. One I am breeding and one I am not. They also have had strange eating patterns lately, but will still eat occasionally.

The one thing I've noticed is that temperature of the F/T food can have some roll in it. While being extremely patient I've found that if I give some rats a little extra warm up time that with the right animal I can get them to strike when they otherwise wouldn't. This brought me to the question... How does everyone heat their TV Dinners for their reptiles. I prefer the let thaw at room temp and heat up with a heat lamp. I feel that warm water would do a better job of heating the rat, but I don't like the idea of wet rats. I've been thinking about trying to make a warmer out of a cooler and heat tape to where you could set it at 98.6 or whatever optimum temp would be and just let the rats sit there. The thing I'm trying figure out is if this would work faster or slower and if it would cause the smaller rats to rot quicker. If you've ever forgot a rat pup under a heat lamp for 45min or so you know what I'm talking about.

Anyway has anyone tried this I'm wondering and if so... How did it work?
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I have two thoughts/comments...

First, the body temperature of rats and mice is 102 degrees so you need your warmer system to heat them to 104-105 so that their heat signature is at least 102 when you introduce them.

Second, for the females that stop eating around 1000 g, if they were close when the cooling period hit, you may want to add a male and see if they breed. I just got a clutch yesterday from a female that was at 1000 g last August and didn't eat until October. I had written her off for the year when I started the breeding process with other snakes. Then a friend suggested I should just breed her and she will start to eat if she wants eggs. To make a shorts story long, she bred and then started eating anything I tossed in the tub, gained 300 g over the next 6 weeks and just gave me a nice clutch of 4 eggs with nice veins in them.

Good luck.

I let them sit out overnight so they are completly thawed and heat them up with warm water in bags they dont mind if they get wet they still eat them. I have also used a heating pad for a person to keep them warm if I have a large amount to feed. The female that is 1000 grams may have folicils and thats why she wont eat I myself would not breed her but if she is going to breed and eat heavy at the same time it would be ok. You might want to consider breeding you own rodents and feeding live if you are going to have a large collection you are taking care of yourself it will save you some time and money. As for the males I have some that will not eat as soon as the introduced to females and some that will eat if they are locked up if I would let them.

I have no intention of breeding the 1000g female. Not that I will never do it, but for right now the care I've put into my snakes means to much to me to take undue risks. I've been thinking a lot about the what you've mentioned about feeding live. I actually breed my own rodents at the moment, but that's actually a lot the reason I do frozen thawed. I do six tubs at 0.2 and rotate two males through them and I have a hard time what I need to pull to freeze With almost twenty in my snake collection I'm afraid that if I feed live I'll run out of particular sizes that I would need. Another big problem I would have is having a place to keep rats for raising. With freezing it seems to be easier because I can freeze the raised rats before they have a chance to have babies. Do you have any ideas on a system I could use to make sure I'd have enough food for my snakes. Also I don't really want to go much more than 4 more females in my rat breeding. If I go much more I feel like the cost and work of the rat breeding won't offset what I could just purchase frozen for. Any insight would be greatly appreciated I'm really liking the idea of just being able to grab 20 rats and throw them in the tubs and let the snakes go to town.

Thanks for the help
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1.0 Spider Ball Python
1.0 Albino Ball Python
0.1 Pastel Ball Python
0.3 Het for Albino Ball Python
0.1 Pinstripe Ball Python
0.1 Bumble Bee Ball Python
1.0 Hypo Ball Python
1.0 Lesser Ball Python
0.1 Mojave Ball Python
0.2 Het for Piebald Ball Python
0.1 Normal Ball Python
0.2 Het for Axanthic Ball Python
0.1 Axanthic Ball Python

You would need quite a bit of room and rodents to go the live route. The other option would be to feed on two days instead of one if you want to feed frozen. I do colubrids one day and pythons and boas the next

I use a 5 gallon bucket and rotate water slowly raising temps. When feeding, I temp gun the food and offer it if it is over 103 degrees. For mine that is the magic number!
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Cindy Steinle
PHFaust
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