Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a very fat and healthy outer banks king hatchling. I bought 2.1 at the same time, none of them having eaten. Within a couple of weeks of receiving them, I got 1.1 of them to eat. But the fattest of the trio hasn't been interested. I've tried live, frozen/thawed, brained, scented with lizard, scented with corn snake, and even both a frozen thawed and a live lizard. None of these attempts have gotten him to eat. But he's still very fat and sassy, and now he's gone into a second shed cycle. He's also continuing to be larger than the other two I purchased at the same time and that were from the same clutch.

Has anyone heard of a king hatchling shedding several times without having eaten? My hope is that he will be hungry once he sheds, otherwise I'll cool him down for three weeks and then warm him up again to see if he's hungry.

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~Sasheena

I had an eastern king hatchling that wasn't feeding for a couple months after I bought her, and shed a couple times during that time. She refused all food, showing no interest at all. I took someone's advice and put her in my rerigerator for 3 or 4 weeks, and she began feeding well a few weeks afterward.

>> I took someone's advice and put her in my rerigerator for 3 or 4 weeks, and she began feeding well a few weeks afterward.

can you elaborate on this so that either a) no one thinks you just popped the snake in the household frig or b) if you did, the rest of us gain a data point suggesting that's possible?

thanks
terry

I'll explain myself a little better here:

I've been told several times that brumating baby snakes can produce a feeding response. I bought an eastern king as a "non-feeder" at the Breeders Expo in Daytona this year. I figured the snake would eat lizards or baby garter snakes, both of which I had readily available at the time. I figured wrong. After about 7 weeks of no feeding, I stuck a digital thermometer into the spare refrigerator. The temperature read at about 40 degrees, sometimes going up to 45, but never below 38. While the temperature was low enough to make me somewhat nervous, I figured that in the wild the snake probably experiences temps lower than that and should be fine. I put the snake in a large deli tray with aspen bedding as a substrate and a small water dish, and put that into the fridge. After cooling down, I checked on the snake every few days, even took him out a couple times. It was cool site to see his tongue flickering in slow-motion. I had planned to brumate for a month, but other people in the house needed the fridge, so out the snake went. I tried feeding her a day or 2 afterward with no luck. I got a new batch of pinkies a couple weeks later, after the snake had shed, and threw one in with her. I checked on her a couple hours later, and the pinkie had been eaten! I gave her another, and she took it immediately, and has been slamming pinkies every week ever since. A successful experiment, and I wouldn't hesitate to do so again if faced with the same problem.

Or so my explanation might make it seem if you read it closely. The snake is a female, and I'm pretty sure it always has been.

I put my Russian sandboas in the fridge, but I cranked it up to 48. (it's what the breeder recommended). Let us know how it turns out with colubrids, I've never brumated one before.
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Peter: It's OK, I'll handle it. I read a book about something like this.
Brian: Are you sure it was a book? Are you sure it wasn't NOTHING?

I'll be interested ins eeing what others think of the frig brumation: it's ironic that some of us (ok, i'll just speak for myself!) spend a couple weeks graduallyk lowering the temp from 80 to 60 for brumation for my hondos, or to low fifties for my pyros, but either way we're talking about no more than a couple degrees a day change in temps. And if I understand correctly, yours went rather abruptly from what--mid 70s or warmer? to mid 40s? Maybe these animals are a lot hardier than we think.

I've also heard people say snakes won't get colder than maybe the 50s in a lot of areas because that's what subterranean temps stay at. I know a little bit about that from spelunking days in kentucky, but i'm sure others know much, much more. has anyone ever routinely located brumating colubrids and taken their body temps? or the temps of their environment? obviously when it's zero fahrenheit in northern kentucky a black rat snake that's merely buried itself in leaves is at risk of freezing temps; i suspect there are other places it could go in the same area where the temps woiuld stay in the 40s or even the 50s.

Who's got more experience to share on these issues?

thanks
terry

It went from my garage temp, probably mid-70s to 40-45. A gradual cool-down does seem a bit safer, but I don't think that is what snakes experience in the wild. I know that here in the Tampa Bay area, temps can go from the 70s to 40s or slightly less from day to night if a cold-front moves through. I've found snakes under plywood in my back yard with temps in the lower 40s, and even my box turtles will be out and about on days like that. I've thought that as long as these temperate zone species' body temps didn't get to freezing point (assumedly 32°F, where the water in their bodies would crystallize) they would be more or less okay. My box turtles will half-bury themselves at night, especially if temps are below 32 at night, which happens for at least a short time on almost every night from late December to early Feb. I'll take ground temps from where my turtles are buried this winter to see what difference between air and ground temps are. They aren't colubrids, but they are temperate-zone reptiles prone to freezing and are living semi-naturally.

Then again, you are working with Honduran milksnakes from Central America and I'm working with an eastern king from southern Georgia, which should experience fairly different temperature extremes in a natural setting.

Sasheena, as you note it's the biggest fattest baby that's not feeding, it may simply have had such an internal food store that it's not getting any signals yet telling it to eat.

But here's another feeding tip to try: WASH your food item with a NON-SCENTED soap (that's important; i use an ivory dishsoap i ran across) and rinse thoroughly and dry, and then offer it. I've had snakes that rejected all the other usual feeding alternatives eat almost immediately when offered a washed pinky, live or dead. Of course i'd recommend doing this after withholding any offerings for 24 hrs. I volunteered this method to a fella the other night and he wrote me back to tell me his recalcitrant feeder had eaten the washed pinky in less than an hour after it was presented. Like you, he'd been trying all the other (live, dead, brained, scented, deli-cupped) alternatives. It's worth a try at least.

peace & good luck,
terry dunham
albino tricolors

Thanks for the advice!

I've been trying him every three or four days without really worrying. I just had never had a hatchling who DIDN'T eat after the first but before the second shed. As he's a big ol fatty, I don't worry about him suddenly dying on me. If he hasn't eaten in the next ten or so days, I'll just brumate him until I get back from vacation, and then warm him up for a new try.

~Sasheena
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~Sasheena