Will Snakes Starve Themselves

Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum

Help Support Aussie Pythons & Snakes Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
After reading all of your comments I'd say its your thawing technique. The major breeder near me Steven Leisk has this feeding process on his website, i have always used it and have never had feeding problems (burning the snake due to it beeing too hot, poaching the mouse etc..). I have also had experience with getting non-feeders to feed, and have succeeded over time, usually sooner than a month.

Thawing Method for Frozen Rats and Mice

There are many ideas and 'techniques' for thawing Frozen Rats and Mice (FRM). Below is a method DoLittle Farm recommends as best practice to maintain food quality and palatability.
  1. Remove required amount of food from the ziplock pack. Reseal the pack and return to freezer.
  2. Place a single piece of 2-ply, unscented paper hand towel on a heatpad, heatcord or other warm surface (like a VCR that is on). Place the rat or mouse on top of the paper towel. It is a good idea to do this close to your pet reptile's cage, as he will smell the food and become quite excited.
  3. After an appropriate amount of time, turn the rat or mouse over and thaw the other side. Click here for a thawing time chart
  4. Once the rat or mouse is thawed and warm to the touch, check the abdomen for any frozen or cool spots by rolling around between your fingers and thumb.
  5. When satisfied the rat or mouse is thawed and warm (approx 38oC - close to your body temperature), offer to your pet reptile as soon as possible.
A few thoughts:

  • Once thawed, the longer you wait until you feed, the lower the food quality as gut bacteria has already started digestion again.
  • Do not use warm water to thaw. It can poach the food (resulting in split skin and guts everywhere) or can wash the scent of the rat or mouse away, leaving it unpalatable.
  • Do not use the microwave. Cooking of the rat or mouse can occur (if it doesn’t explode first!), or you could burn your pet reptile's esophagus with excessive heat.
Ide strongly recommend this technique, and yes I do know many people use boiling/hot water. I am listing this as it is the best technique I know of and use and to help out with getting this python feeding! Please dont take this as a shot at others feeding techniques.
 
After reading all of your comments I'd say its your thawing technique. The major breeder near me Steven Leisk has this feeding process on his website, i have always used it and have never had feeding problems (burning the snake due to it beeing too hot, poaching the mouse etc..). I have also had experience with getting non-feeders to feed, and have succeeded over time, usually sooner than a month.

Thawing Method for Frozen Rats and Mice


There are many ideas and 'techniques' for thawing Frozen Rats and Mice (FRM). Below is a method DoLittle Farm recommends as best practice to maintain food quality and palatability.
  1. Remove required amount of food from the ziplock pack. Reseal the pack and return to freezer.
  2. Place a single piece of 2-ply, unscented paper hand towel on a heatpad, heatcord or other warm surface (like a VCR that is on). Place the rat or mouse on top of the paper towel. It is a good idea to do this close to your pet reptile's cage, as he will smell the food and become quite excited.
  3. After an appropriate amount of time, turn the rat or mouse over and thaw the other side. Click here for a thawing time chart
  4. Once the rat or mouse is thawed and warm to the touch, check the abdomen for any frozen or cool spots by rolling around between your fingers and thumb.
  5. When satisfied the rat or mouse is thawed and warm (approx 38oC - close to your body temperature), offer to your pet reptile as soon as possible.
A few thoughts:

  • Once thawed, the longer you wait until you feed, the lower the food quality as gut bacteria has already started digestion again.
  • Do not use warm water to thaw. It can poach the food (resulting in split skin and guts everywhere) or can wash the scent of the rat or mouse away, leaving it unpalatable.
  • Do not use the microwave. Cooking of the rat or mouse can occur (if it doesn’t explode first!), or you could burn your pet reptile's esophagus with excessive heat.
Ide strongly recommend this technique, and yes I do know many people use boiling/hot water. I am listing this as it is the best technique I know of and use and to help out with getting this python feeding! Please dont take this as a shot at others feeding techniques.

as its taking longer to thaw and get to temp then the quality will be worse than using water imo. As i have said above putting it into a bag then defrosting in water will stop the smell/rat being wet. To defrost a medium rat takes me about 10 mins in water. If i was to use this method i shudder to think how long it would take.

Not to mention water is a better thermal conductor than air
 
as its taking longer to thaw and get to temp then the quality will be worse than using water imo. As i have said above putting it into a bag then defrosting in water will stop the smell/rat being wet. To defrost a medium rat takes me about 10 mins in water. If i was to use this method i shudder to think how long it would take.

Not to mention water is a better thermal conductor than air

as i said, i just wished to help with getting this python feeding, i did not want to enguage an argument! And you couldnt help yourself!
 
lol yep im arguing.................................................................


just pointing out a contradiction in the thawing instructions not your help.............................
 
If you find something that works, I'm keen to hear it. I hope your snake starts feeding soon, mate.
 
After reading all of your comments I'd say its your thawing technique. The major breeder near me Steven Leisk has this feeding process on his website, i have always used it and have never had feeding problems (burning the snake due to it beeing too hot, poaching the mouse etc..). I have also had experience with getting non-feeders to feed, and have succeeded over time, usually sooner than a month.

Thawing Method for Frozen Rats and Mice

There are many ideas and 'techniques' for thawing Frozen Rats and Mice (FRM). Below is a method DoLittle Farm recommends as best practice to maintain food quality and palatability.

  1. Remove required amount of food from the ziplock pack. Reseal the pack and return to freezer.
  2. Place a single piece of 2-ply, unscented paper hand towel on a heatpad, heatcord or other warm surface (like a VCR that is on). Place the rat or mouse on top of the paper towel. It is a good idea to do this close to your pet reptile's cage, as he will smell the food and become quite excited.
  3. After an appropriate amount of time, turn the rat or mouse over and thaw the other side. Click here for a thawing time chart
  4. Once the rat or mouse is thawed and warm to the touch, check the abdomen for any frozen or cool spots by rolling around between your fingers and thumb.
  5. When satisfied the rat or mouse is thawed and warm (approx 38oC - close to your body temperature), offer to your pet reptile as soon as possible.
A few thoughts:


  • Once thawed, the longer you wait until you feed, the lower the food quality as gut bacteria has already started digestion again.
  • Do not use warm water to thaw. It can poach the food (resulting in split skin and guts everywhere) or can wash the scent of the rat or mouse away, leaving it unpalatable.
  • Do not use the microwave. Cooking of the rat or mouse can occur (if it doesn’t explode first!), or you could burn your pet reptile's esophagus with excessive heat.
Ide strongly recommend this technique, and yes I do know many people use boiling/hot water. I am listing this as it is the best technique I know of and use and to help out with getting this python feeding! Please dont take this as a shot at others feeding techniques.
That's pretty much how we do it, we put the mice on the hot spot of the enclosure above the lamp. Never had a problem with them defrosting this way.
 
looks like i wont have to find out if my snake would starve herself as she has now had 3 un-assisted feeds on fuzzy mice. after 6 weeks of waiting, i assist fed her a pinky mouse just to get something in her belly and after 2 weeks of this she slammed a fuzzy mouse that i was flicking around in front of her. i was so surprised :)
i'm going to try a pinkie rat next week as she should be eating bigger meals than fuzzy mice.

woohoo good ending yay
 
Im gathering after what you said, you have purchased a non feeding albino (alot of these have been going very cheaply now)

If so, why did you do that if you have no expericance with these issues, if I'm wrong and you purchased the snake feeding (which if you did how come it hadnt been fed for two weeks when you purchased it) ask the breeder what he/she was doing to make the animal feed

Ben

If this is in fact the case, I find it quite sad that some breeders have resorted to palming off their non-feeders to inexperienced keepers.

What are the temperatures in your enclosure? Was the animal feeding well before you purchased it (bar the last two weeks)? If you knew it had missed two feeds prior to you purchasing, what did the breeder say in relation to this?
 
looks like i wont have to find out if my snake would starve herself as she has now had 3 un-assisted feeds on fuzzy mice. after 6 weeks of waiting, i assist fed her a pinky mouse just to get something in her belly and after 2 weeks of this she slammed a fuzzy mouse that i was flicking around in front of her. i was so surprised :)
i'm going to try a pinkie rat next week as she should be eating bigger meals than fuzzy mice.

woohoo good ending yay
I am soooo happy for you both :) As I kept reading this thread I was becoming truly worried for the poor Baby, I can imagine how relieved
you must be :)
Kind regards
Crystal
 
Such good news. I only hope that things just keep getting better and you can start to enjoy your little one.
 
Pinky rat was taken tonight, took bloody ages though and she popped it in the process :/ doesn't she know playing with her food like that causes extra work for me :(

i was pretty happy both her and my jungle converted to rats tonight with no issues. Now my lizards will have to polish off the mice i have left, or buy another hatchie. Hmmm decisions decisions.

My last post on this thread as it seams i shouldn't have too many feeding issues with her in the future, thanks to all who took an interest and offered advice it was greatly appreciated.
 
One of my 3 still hasn't eaten. He shed the night after I got him, so I know he's eating. Been trying every 7 days, tomorrow is feeding day but I'm going to skip trying him this week, give him a good fortnight alone. Hope it works.
 
One of my 3 still hasn't eaten. He shed the night after I got him, so I know he's eating. Been trying every 7 days, tomorrow is feeding day but I'm going to skip trying him this week, give him a good fortnight alone. Hope it works.

What's the enclosure like? Does the snake have somewhere big enough to hide? Hide boxes at both cooler and warmer ends of the enclosure/tub?

Some snakes are more sensitive to stress than others. Breeding this trait out seems to be the best way to rectify the problem, but I'd say giving the same more options might bring about a feeding response. Snakes generally don't feed for 2 reasons - mating season or stress, and you can rule out the mating season if it's a young snake so that only leaves us with one reason - stress. What could possibly be stressing out the snake? Find out what it is and you may be able to get it feeding it again.
 
Hi well if you think the feeding records are true there has to be some reason why it wont eat not enough heat stressed in a noisy place lots of things to consider but even though its very frustrating even a baby snake can go many months without food there real survivors just keep trying.Many of us have had non feeding snakes takes great patients and persistance you can try gently rubbing the food over the snakes upper body to get them interested warming up the food items just before feeding can work well good luck
 
the way i've found my lil albino will take a feed is defrost the rat / mouse as normal then flick it around the floor for a bit till she's nice and interested. then take it out and heat it up again (usually a lil cool by this time) then once its warm again i just drop it from above to land right in front of her.

then all i have to do is try and wipe the big grin off my face after she has taken another feed.
 
I transfer the required food from freezer to fridge overnight before feeding,its easier to heat up from fridge temp.
 
Hatchies can-will starve themselfs to the point of starvation,some will go as long as 8months without a feed.Ive had adults go 6-8months without food without much body lose.Didnt matter what temperature etc they can-will just go off the food when the weather is cooler.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top