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Posted by Taceas on May 09, 2003 at 12:37:04:

In Reply to: For those of you who feed live, have you ever had... posted by AgentOfLillith on May 09, 2003 at 08:43:05:

Yeah, I've had a couple of snakes that were hard as hell to get switched over to F/T. It just takes persistance and sometimes a mean streak to in essence starve them so that all there's to eat, is dead.

I had a juvenile snow. She wasn't all that great of an eater when I did get her. Every meal was an ordeal for her. She would only eat a live pink, and never constricted it much other than to get the legs down. She'd never constrict till it died completely. So it'd crawl around in her stomach, and I guess irritate it enough to cause her to regurge a few hours later. I think the 6 months that I had her before she died, she only digested 3 meals completely. Seems every meal with her was a regurge.

Now Hecate, the motley that escaped last July and I just re-found her outside this March. Before she escaped, she was the champion of F/T. But when I got her back, it was live all the way. I had to re-teach her that F/T is food too. It took about a month and a half, but we got there. I started out with live rat pups, eyes still closed yet fuzzy (don't know the name for that). She'd constrict them till dead and eat. So I let her have her way since I don't know how little she'd eaten while escaped. I fed her live about 4 times. Then I tried a freshly killed rat pup, I wiggled it by the tail to get the movement, and made it run away from her..she ate it. Next one, freshly killed just laying there..she ate it. Then tried F/T..wouldn't touch it, until I scented it with my kleenex's used for mice..now she can't resist it.

All 7 of my snakes now eat F/T with the prey item scented in the mouse kleenexes beforehand. So you might try that.

Sometimes it's just all a matter of not feeding them for a couple of weeks to get them hungry for whatever you stick in there with them. =)

I would try and get them on freshly killed at the very least, then you can work from there.

Good luck to you,

Misty

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