Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello! Okay, I have had Noah, my new ball python baby, for a bit over a week. Today was the day to feed the cornsnakes so I brought home food for Noah as well. The cornsnakes are eating live pinkies. I brought home frozen small adult mice and one live adult mouse for Noah. LLL Reptile said he was feeding on live small adult mice. I even bought Mouse Maker (just in case). Thawed the mouse at room temperature for several hours, heated it up a bit with the heat lamp, put it in the bag, placed Noah inside. He took a few seconds and then struck the mouse and coiled. After about five seconds, he released the mouse and will now have nothing whatsoever to do with it.

Any thoughts?? Suggestions? How many of you feed live? I hate the idea of anything suffering but I am darn tempted to feed Noah that live mouse!! He seems eager to eat and I think he would welcome that wriggling mouse. I even tried "jiggling" the dead one...he wants nothing to do with it.

Thanks for the help!!

i have a baby ball that will do the same thing. he is about 6 months old and i just switched him over to fresh killed mice at his last feeding. he would strike at it, then curl up, and then just slither away. so what i did was put him into a holding rubbermaid container and put one half of it back onto his heating pad with the dead mouse in the middle and just left him alone for a few hours.

then walla, i came back and the mouse was gone and the snake had a lump in his middle. i would say just leave the snake alone with the mouse overnight and see what happens. he also might still be getting used to his surroundings since he is new, so maybe waiting another week wouldn't be that bad of an idea.

if you want to try and feed a live mouse, of course never leave them unattended, when my babies were eating live, i would sit there and watch the entire feeding process and i would have little forcepts to help pull the mouse's one end away from the snake if it was scratching at the snake. just always becareful and watch.

good luck with your new little guy
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~dana~

1.1 ball pythons (hailex and roxy)
1.0 cat (whiskers)
1.1 russian hamsters (peanut and tj)