The following works well for me. Offer f/t and live pinks/fuzzy mice to all at first. Some will take them. Let some time pass, and then try live goldfish or minnows, which you should have started keeping prior to the eggs hatching...you will have a lot of mortalities with feeder fish and you feed the healthy ones to snakes. Add a piece of fish fillet of dead small fish or fish scented f/t fuzzy in the shallow water bowl, often they eat the live fish and also the fish scented mouse or fish pieces. Many kinds of fish work, and I have used bluegills, bass, trout, anchovy, saury, dace etc. Keep your cool, some may hold out for a few weeks/month, but they will start eventually. I also have offered frozen/thawed bullfrogs, that just metamorphed...they are small and fabulously abundant if you time it right. Once you get a couple meals in them, of fish or other, they usually become more agressive. Also day old quail, or maybe the heads only. I think most neonates need some visual stimulation, a live feeder often does the trick, and follow it with f/t while it is in the mood to feed. Try to get them to take off forceps, but I don't suggest tease feeding like you do with GTP's etc. I have tried keeping multiple neonates together, and the excitement created by a feeder may get a non-feeder to feed...competition? Some folks say "blood and guts" smeared on the food items help. The latter ideas from Robert Bruce and Alan Brutoski, both who have forgotten more about Drys than I know...with luck they will chime in. My way works but is sort of labor intensive, these gentlemen with clutches of 50-70 eggs/year surely know some good methods. PM me if you want more ideas, I am still learning myself but I have had good success with my '09 clutch of couperi. Good luck, Vic H. Imperial Valley, CA.

P.S. rumor has it that couperi really like neonate ratsnakes, maybe someone who breeds a lot of corns would have a runt or mortality that is otherwise healthy to feed? You could make it last by blending into a slurry and scenting more convenient items i.e. mice with it.

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