Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi,

I recently purchased a baby corn snake at the Hamburg show. The vendor told me that she was feeding on pinkies.

Well, I waited a couple of days and gave her a pinkie. No luck, she wasn't interested. It's been a week to date and she doesn't have the slightest interest in these (live) pinkies.

She seems to spend the majority of time trying to escape from the enclosure. I've read that a baby corn should be fine a 2.5 or a 5 gallon tank. I opted for the 5 gallon.

Is it normal for them to take this long to start feeding? Are there any tricks that I should know to get her started?

Thanks,

Susan P.

p.s. I have larger burms & boas and never had a problem feeding them. The "picker feeder" thing is new to me....

If she was eating f/t for the breeder, it could be she's afraid of the live ones? Wondering why in the world her food is wiggling around now. How often are you offering it to her? Wait at least a couple days between offerings, I would wait longer even than that. They can go quite a long time without eating and have no ill-effects from it, so don't worry about rushing her to eat. I'd try a frozen/thawed one next though.

good luck
-----
Dianne
AKA IcedGoddess
0.1 Snow (Ruby)
1.0 Anery A (Breaden)
0.1 Amel (Edana)
0.0.7 Normal het-snow (no names yet)
1.1 Bloodred (Vlad the Impailer and Natasha)
0.1 Anery Stripe (Morticia)
1.0 Candy Cane (Kane)

1.3 Cats (Alexys{f}, Mikki{f}, Timothy{m}, Seven{f})
0.1 Child
1.0 Boyfriend
IcedGoddess Creations
Castle Serpents

I would try getting one out of the freezer, and placing it in a bag, then just running hot water on it until it gets warm. I do this with my corn to heat his pinky mice all the time, as it is not always so easy to find live feeders, and frozen have some good benifits as I can inject anything into them . Anyway, use tongs or whatever, and piss the snake off a little with it...get the mouse dangling right in front of his face, even bump his nose a few times. Baby corns are "nippy", and will strike at anything a little scary. Then you have it in its mouth, and you let go...it will do the rest. The alternative is to spray it with mouse maker and maybe that could help. I like to dangle the mice infront of it and then let its tongue hit it a few times to be sure it knows that it is food...the snake then grabs it and munches away! Good luck!

-Steve Clark
TurtsAndTorts