Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was waiting for my order from Rodent Pro to come. These guys all shed about 4 days ago and I really wanted to get them fed for the first time. Not even one showed any interest whatsoever. They just crawled around like nothing edible was anywhere around. Guess I should try the live and then a f/t right after trick? I do not want live only feeders. I just remembered how much I hate getting babies to eat. Haven't done this since I had a litter of baby copperheads 3 years ago that didn't take their first meal until 4 months after they were born. Let me tell ya, that was fun.

Ryan,
That reminded me of a story. I bought a baby northern copperhead and it wouldn't eat pinks for me. I had some chameleons at the time so I thought why not try a cricket. Bingo!!! The copperhead took the cricket within minutes. It ate crickets for several weeks before finally taking a pinky mouse. I had forgotten all about that until I read your post. I'm sure those little ones will take off soon. Ron
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The Crawl Space

I would say go for live feeders to get them started. Live rat pinks or pups to be exact. They couldn't possibly do any damage to the snake and they'll most likely take them. I got 26 CH balls and 24 are taking rat pups and have never missed a meal. I have two feeding on mouse fuzzies that will be switched over soon hopefully. If they never eat anything but rats you'll be thanking yourself down the road. Try getting a female up to breeding size on crickets.

I saw in your picture that you had them all together. If they are being housed this way they most likely wont feed. They need to be housed seperately with a hide box.

I think you'll definitely need to go with live. Out of all the snakes I've hatched and established, I can only think of 1 carpet python that actually took F/T for a first meal. I start all of my babies on crawler mice (somewhere between a fuzzy and a hopper). They are perfect...large enough and enough movement to be attractive, but not too intimidating. Go for a colored one as opposed to white (again, my experience is that some babies really seem to prefer darker mice, especially at first).

Now on to my question. Alot of folks say to start them on rat pinks or pups so as to not have the trouble of changing them over to rats later on. Again speaking from experience, baby balls are super easy to switch over...if you do it at the right time. Baby balls go into a phase after they've eaten 5 or 6 times where they are just super aggressive feeders. During that phase, balls will east just about anything. Most of mine will take a FT weaned/small rat the first time its offered. I have never had one that took more than a couple of patient trys to get switched. Once they take the first rat, there's no looking back. The key is the patient presentation of the FT rat on hemostats, and to get the rat good and warm.

Hope I've helped some...P.S. Balls will readily switch from lived to PK during that same feeding frenzy period.

All of my ball pythons have always started off with hopper mice as their first meal. Recently I purchases a 25 lot of female CH balls, Since I only had 21 shoe boxes available I had to double up 4 of the boxes. I tried to feed frozen thawed as their first meal, I always try that in the hope that at least 1 will start off right away with frozen, so far it has never happened. I followed up with live hopper mice, and EVERY snake that was in it's own shoe box ate. NONE of the snakes that were doubled up ate. I've finally got them all in their own boxes now and the last time I fed I only had 5 refusals (these were ALL snakes that until recently had been doubled up) The trick is to get them eating regularily. Once you have them feeding on a schedule it's a lot easier to get them switched over to what YOU want them eating.

Mark

>>I was waiting for my order from Rodent Pro to come. These guys all shed about 4 days ago and I really wanted to get them fed for the first time. Not even one showed any interest whatsoever. They just crawled around like nothing edible was anywhere around. Guess I should try the live and then a f/t right after trick? I do not want live only feeders. I just remembered how much I hate getting babies to eat. Haven't done this since I had a litter of baby copperheads 3 years ago that didn't take their first meal until 4 months after they were born. Let me tell ya, that was fun.
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