Bloodreds are notorious lizard feeders at first, and it may be that you have just a couple of hardheads there. If you'll try to feed them anoles at first (or anole parts, if the babies are REALLY tiny), then you may have a better chance at getting them to take scented pinks later. The important thing is to get them eating SOMETHING right away, because it seems in some neonate corns that the feeding response gets "turned off" if they go without food for too long.
Here's what I do, in progression, for the hardest feeders:
Anoles (or parts),
pinks (or parts) wrapped in anole skin,
Pinks with increasingly smaller pieces of anole skin on their heads,
Pinks rubeed with an anole (no skin),
Pinks rubbed with anoles (with skin),
pinks kept in deli cups with anoles,
unscented pinks.
If a corn that I have started ever refuses a meal, I always go back two steps in the process to start them over again, so I do not risk getting back on a non-feeding binge. So, if a corn refuses an unscented pink, I try him with a pink rubbed with an anole (with skin), rather than just one step back of a pink in a deli cup with an anole. It works for me.
Also, in regards to the pinks rubbed with an anole (without skin), what I do is take a frozen anole and cut off its dewlap. I usually have others that are problem children, if I have one, so I always have use for that piece of skin on another baby. However, for the one needing the pink scented by an anole without skin, I take the pinky and rub its entire head in that open wound of the anole. I try to get as much "ick" on the pinky as I can. That always seems to better bridge the gap between pinks with skin on them, and pinks simply rubbed on the skin of an anole.
I've fed a lot of bloodreds that were confirmed lizard feeders with this system, so I kow it works. You may get one baby that will skip a step, or even two, but I would not recommend risking it. The problem with babies is that they simply cannot go without food for as long as an adult can. In the very beginning, they have the remnant of their yolk sacs to keep them nourished, but when that is gone, they HAVE to eat. So, in order to keep them from going on their little starvation diets, I have used the above steps to get them to feed. I have been highly successful with this method too. If I get a baby early enough, it will be eating f/t pinks in a few weeks most of the time. Some corns just die, and there is nothing to be done about it, but the VAST majority make it.
One last word of caution. Make SURE that a refusal of food is really that, and not simply the result of a baby needing to shed. Your snakes have gone too long for this to be the actual cause of continually not eating, but many amel animals are difficult to spot as being in shed, and some will count that as a refusal to eat. Before you start backtracking on the steps, makes sure the little guy simply isn't about to shed, afterwhich he'll take his next meal with no difficulty.
Good luck with them!
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Darin Chappell
Hillbilly Herps
PO Box 254
Rogersville, MO 65742
