Reptile & Amphibian Forums

okay, i've been keeping a variety of boids for some time...last summer i bought a pair of 4 month old DH burms from a reputable breeder.

the male will only eat mice. the female would eat a corndog if a let her...but the male...just mice. needless to say he is quite a bit smaller than the female. i've tried offering a mouse and then a small rat, i've tried scenting a f/t rat with mouse, live small rats, and chicks. but to no avail. i'm really starting to worry about him...i mean, there is no way he can maintain his metabolism on mice...right?

if you have any ideas...please share them.

thank you, chris

The most important thing is for you to be as patient as you can be. Finicky feeders will often "come around" in their own time, but it may take considerable time.

One Irian Jaya female I have would only accept mice. When I bought her she was already 6 or 7 years old and had always only been fed mice. I would occasionally trick her into taking rats by first allowing her to smell a mouse and switching it just before the strike, or scenting the rat with a mouse, but I never stopped offering her prekilled rats every week or two. It took her a little over 2 years before she accepted her first medium rat, but once she did, she was a rat-obsessed pig.

I also have a female jungle carpet that would only accept mice for the first 20 months of her life. But like the irian jaya female I never stopped occasionally offering her rats and just two months ago she took her first small rat. After that she became a voracious rat eater.

I have a 2 year old albino patternless burmese female that would only accept mice when she was a baby. She was very hard to trick, but I got a method that is virtually foolproof: You rub the saliva of the animal they like on the nose of the animal you want them to eat as well as a little urine on the forehead. It's best to use prekilled as it it still warm, or heat your f/t to about 100 degrees. Burms have thermal sensing equipment on their lips and it's hard to fool them that the prey is "alive" if it isn't very warm. Anyway,... the end result: She never willingly accepted rats and went right into rabbits, which was fine by me as I breed both rabbits and rats on a LARGE scale. She is now a 10 foot 21 month old, gravid female. Not a bad ending to a fairly finicky snake I suppose. if you know of a rabbit breeder nearby you may want to try your burm out on rabbit pinks or babies. It is really the perfect segway into what the snake is destined to eat anyway.

>>okay, i've been keeping a variety of boids for some time...last summer i bought a pair of 4 month old DH burms from a reputable breeder.
>>
>>the male will only eat mice. the female would eat a corndog if a let her...but the male...just mice. needless to say he is quite a bit smaller than the female. i've tried offering a mouse and then a small rat, i've tried scenting a f/t rat with mouse, live small rats, and chicks. but to no avail. i'm really starting to worry about him...i mean, there is no way he can maintain his metabolism on mice...right?
>>
>>if you have any ideas...please share them.
>>
>>thank you, chris
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Believe in yourself and your abilities and you can accomplish anything.

i think that is solid advice. in fact i do know a rabbit breeder...and i will be contacting him tomorrow so i can give that a try.

more than anything, i think i needed to voice my frustration. i mean burms are supposed to eat like it's going out of style, right? well, he (destro) is certainly reminding me that they are all individuls.

good luck with the gravid albino patternless...when are you expecting eggs? you might let me know when you have some...i may have an interest.

thanks, chris
chrisolsonreptiles@juno.com

Good to hear. Good luck on that working, I'd say you have about a 50/50 chance of him wanting the rabbit pink. Get a live one and place it in with him alive. This will increase your chances that he will be stimulated to eat it.

Yes, burmese are supposed to be the eating machines that burmese are legendary for. It's just a matter of time really. Once your little guy relaxes or you figure out his particular tastes you will have your little eating machine, no doubt.

Thanks for the best wishes on the albino patternless. That particular female was bred to a patternless green rock first and then with an albino patternless burm as a backup. So if the patternless rock breeding was the successful breeding then her babies will be 50/50 burm/rock hybrids, triple het for rock green patternless, burm albino, and burm green patternless,.... OR,... if luck is really with me,.... both green patternless morph traits (burm and rock) will be compatable and I will have the worlds first green patternless rock/burm hybrids. This is a longshot and I am SO not counting on it. Being more realistic I am expecting hybrid, triple hets. But I also bred a male albino patternless to one of my green patternless rock females, so I will have unrelated hybrid triple hets to pair up with them.

Now, of course, if the patternless rock breeding was unsuccessful and the male albino burm is the papa then the babies will simply be albino patternless. Not a terrible scenario either I suppose. In any event I have another albino patternless female that was first bred with a male albino patternless and then with [TOP SECRET] as a backup.

>>i think that is solid advice. in fact i do know a rabbit breeder...and i will be contacting him tomorrow so i can give that a try.
>>
>>more than anything, i think i needed to voice my frustration. i mean burms are supposed to eat like it's going out of style, right? well, he (destro) is certainly reminding me that they are all individuls.
>>
>>good luck with the gravid albino patternless...when are you expecting eggs? you might let me know when you have some...i may have an interest.
>>
>>thanks, chris
>>chrisolsonreptiles@juno.com
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Believe in yourself and your abilities and you can accomplish anything.

Careful you don't get surprise attacked with that thread from a couple posts below . Huge morph discussion going on down there. ^__^
~SK

Thanks for the head's up, but I have been attacked and experienced character assassination attempts SOOO many times and came out completely unscathed that I am numb to it and couldn't care less.

>>Careful you don't get surprise attacked with that thread from a couple posts below . Huge morph discussion going on down there. ^__^
>> ~SK
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Believe in yourself and your abilities and you can accomplish anything.