Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We bought a large lot of babies and we are having tons of trouble with the males. They were all supposed to be captive bred babies and feeding. At least that's what we were told. We have now had 15 males die on us. We've had them for a month now and we've had some die every week. Especially this week. We've tried frozen, live, pinkie and fuzzy mice, pinkie and fuzzy rats, we've done the thawed dance for them, and for the past two weeks we've been assist feeding some of them.

Some of the males are doing great, eating like clock work and never refusing. Out of all the ones we've assist fed, only one has regurged.

Each snake is in it's own container and the temp is a consistant 84-85 degrees with a couple degree variation depending on the weather outside, like last week when it was 102 here. Each has their own water too.

What are we doing wrong? Any ideas? This is seriously giving me a complex because we've never had this kind of trouble feeding babies before. Did we just get a huge percentage of "bad" babies? Help!! TIA

Sounds like you got some captive hatched bush babies. CBB with no parasite issues can go for quite a long time without eating and really not lose a whole lot of weight. Usually a few months. Assist feeding works well with balls and you usually dont have to put it in much further than their mouth. May want to take a fecal up to a vet and I wouldnt be surprised if you didnt need some flagyl or panacur. You will likely only need to do one fecal on the "worst" one you have to find your answer.

Reptile Basics Inc

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Rich Goldzung
Reptile Basics Inc
www.reptilebasics.com

The first thing I see is that you are using prey items that are what I would consider too small for a ball to be interested in even a hatchling. Have you tried hopper mice or rat pups? That is what my hatchlings are started on. I do have one CBB hatchling that I have been assist feeding for almost 5 months he just took his first meal on his own this week - so I know how difficult some can be. Sometimes they can be a bit of a challenge - what are the weights on them? Are they loosing a great deal of weight or holding steady? Also you may want to consider bumping the temperature up just slightly to about 88 degrees (I know if you've got them in shoeboxes it's kinda hard to get a good gradient). just keep at it - they'll come around.
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Tosha

"One of these days i am going to wake up..look around...and realize my place looks more like "Ace Venturas"s than my own." Coldthumb

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Well the good news is we've only lost one more male this week. He regurged after being assisted and died later that day. Strange thing is that the pinkie we fed it was in no way to large. I'd call it a happy medium.

As for the size we're feeding them, we're feeding various sizes to different snakes. All of our females and about 4 males are on rat pups. The rest of them there's no way they could take a rat pup. Well, maybe they could, but I would be amazed. We don't have any mice offspring yet, only rat in various sizes.

Snake weight...I have no clue actually. I need to find my postage scale and get them weighed. I'd say about half of them are holding steady in weight, but the others are losing. I'm hoping with the ones we've assisted they won't lose anymore.

The strange thing is that they will be all over their tubs one day and have good weight and then the next day they have lost tons of weight and are on the downhill fast. I just don't understand how it can flip so fast.

We did bring the temps up too, hopefully that will make some difference. Thanks everyone for the advice. Please let me know if you have anything else that may help us getting them all eating.

Most likely you are dealing with CH babies not CBB babies. I wish i could offer more help, most of mine have eaten when left overnight with a live mouse fuzzy. I started with 22 and now have 16 I got them 2 weeks ago and some where too weak from the start. Since I've gotten food into them only one has died and there is only one that hasn't eaten yet but she was small and went into shed and couldn't get her shed off herself, too weak, she got one tiny piece off her belly and from there I had to towel it off. 6 of mine are on ft rats from the second day I got them the others on live fuzzy or hopper mice. Good luck.
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Nita Hamilton
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Ball Pythons