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Posted by logan on March 11, 2003 at 18:50:06:
In Reply to: baby atb will not eat.. posted by donk142 on March 11, 2003 at 18:01:56:
Does the animal look healthy? Is it alert? Does it seem starving? Though not entirely common, some neonates will go 5-6 weeks between meals. Offer only pinkies. Try both dead and alive. Is the snake very aggresive? If not, I wouldn't bump it in the nose with the pinky, particularily if it seems like it's trying to get away most of the time. I wouldn't offer food every night either. He might start associating the pinkies with intruders, especially if you stick them in its face every night. Offer food every 4-5 days. Try leaving a live pinky in a small open container overnight so it can't crawl away (without sticking it in its face and irritating it first) , and where it would be in easy view for the snake, preferably in a place the snake can hang from and peer down at the pinky. Make sure the pinky doesn't get too cold where it is. I would suggest buying a small to medium sized tuppaware style box (from target or something) and moving the animal in there. Put a small moss box in there, water bowl of course, and various tangled branches (clean ones), and line it with only newspaper. Put your undertank heater on one side, make sure it's not too high, which they invariably are (you might need to buy a dimmer-also found at target). Spray it once or twice at first to get the humidity up there, and it should stay up pretty easily. Lastly cover most of it with a towel or something. Your snake is probably getting stressed out with its glass enclosure, and all the attention its been getting. Open it maybe once a day or so to make sure it gets some ventilation, but don't touch or disturb the snake. Don't let it get too wet in there. You might want to do this right away, before anything else. I had a neonate once that seemed quite healthy, other than the fact that it ate every 4-5 weeks. I had it in quite an elaborate set up, not huge, but with lots of plants and such and a glass front. I eventually got sick of dealing with dead pinkies so I moved it
into a set-up liek the one I described and it ate within one day. From then on, it ate like clockwork every seven days, without a single problem. The way I've been explained, when they're as small as they are, they are under the impression that everything is trying to eat them (which is true in the wild), and feeding places them in a very vulnerable situation, so they won't eat. Space means death to a neonate, especially tiny nervous neonates like atb's. So I would suggest moving him first, then you'll be able to rule out housing as a problem.
