Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a baby sand boa that's about 8" long. In a 10gal tank under a red light 24hrs with a steady temp of 90 on the hot side and 80 on the cool with a hiding spot that extends corner to corner almost diagonally.
The problem is that she refuses frozen and I've tried leaving her in a zip-lock container over night with thawed pinkies to no avail. The only pet store I know of to get pinkies only has them available MAYBE once every month or two, so it very hard to get them weekly. It's not worth the time, money and hassle to breed mice for one snake. If worst comes to worst though I may breed.
Does anyone have any tips on getting her to eat frozen?

Baby sandboas can do this (same with rosyboas) where they snub thawed but eat live readily. It is one of the quirks of these snakes.

Sometimes warming the thawed food up to 90 deg works. Scenting with live mouse urine can work. Sometimes, letting them get hungry enough works, though some will challenge your patience beyond belief.

I had some wonderful rosies (babies) that would not take thawed for anything but would eat live in a split second. I finally got two to eat thawed rat pinks (rosies love rats I found out, better than mice in many cases). The other snakes I gave away to a friend.
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Mark

my baby kenyans went through the same thing.what worked for me was to thaw the pinks in the hottest tap water you have,over 100 degrees or so if possible.the pinky was hot when i dried it and offered it,and the snakes didn't hesitate one bit.
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1.1 cb spotted turtles (parker(f),stinky(m))
0.0.2 cb baby razorback musks (way too cute)
0.0.1 cb baby eastern mud (also ridiculously cute)
0.0.1 cb reeve's turtle (george)
0.1 cb '09 eastern box (bella)
3.6 ltc eastern box breeders
0.1 cb'06 eastern box(nanners)
1.2 cb'08 kenyan sand boas(1 albino,1 anery,1 normal)
1.0 cb'08 jungle carpet
1.1 stenodactylus geckos
0.1 redeye croc skink
1.0 cb '03 homo sapien(kaelan,6)
"jesus is coming-when i count to 3,everyone jump out and yell SURPRISE!!"

I wanna thank you guys for your help. Nothing has worked though, unfortunately. I guess that I just got a sand boa that's picky as hell.
Luckily though, one of the pet stores in the area has had a steady supply of live pinkies so she has been eating regularly.
Again, thanks for the help.

You hit one of the big issues with young Eryx: they prefer live pinks. If you are moving it to a separate feeding unit as you stated earlier, then you will likely have problems getting it to feed. Some tolerate this, but many will not. You should always feed in the primary unit as these are shy snakes as juveniles and moving them is going to put them off feed in many cases.

I had a large breeding colony of Eryx conicus in the 1980's and 90's. The young always fed the best when kept on an inch or two of fine sand and given live pinks left in overnight. Out of a couple of hundred young produced, I never had one that failed to feed. Substrate temps should be in the mid to upper 80's, and humidity relatively low. Always measure your temps just slightly under the surface of the sand. I always used flexwatt under half the unit which also supplied a cooler side, and did not use an overhead heat source. Shavings don't work as well as sand for the young as I believe they need the security of something more substantial pressing against them until they get older.

Kelly