finicky

[threekids]

??? hello all,
I am having a feeding prob. with my 27 in. f2 hypo male. I am feeding him rat pups right now, but the only way I can get him to take them is to dangle them with tongs. more often than not he still only wants to go after my hand. I do not want to go to live. I have tried the moving into a seperate box to eat and still no results. just wondering if there were any suggestions as this has been going on for 5 months now.

thanks,
mark

[Doug]

HI,
Sorry I am not much help, most snakes will make their owner preform rituals to get them to eat, fresh thawed.
I have one guyana who will only eat in his ice chest, occasionally after being with the warm doa rat he wants me to dangle it in front of his nose.. hehehe I have extra long forceps for retreving that rat...http://photo.redtailboa.org/albums/my-pets/Rudee.sized.jpg
 My female likes me to put it in front of her and let her staire at it to get them juices flowing in her gut  I wait about ten mins, after the wait she expects me to hold it infront of her face and touch its nose to the floor if she  moves towards the rat a little  I pull away and then she lounges... this too requires excellent reflexes... heheh
 My little hog island likes to fight so , I hold the rat above her head she instantly lounges at it yanking it out of the forceps which she promptly drops the rat  to the floor and whirls around on me..hehehe    we do this a few times and finally she decides to consume her ftr.after I let her tugg a little on the rat trying to pull it  away...
 Now the only really easy feeder is my east king who when I come in the room comes out of his hide and begs to be fed... THis occurs every day cwm13.gif cwm13.gif...
If iam not careful the king is out of his cage sniffing my hands for food and will climb up my arm while Iam still trying to remove  the cover.He's that fast.http://photo.redtailboa.org/albums/my-pets/Hungry_LooK.sized.jpg
A little unnerving to say the least I once gave him a rat pup while holding him he just slurped it down and was sniffiny around my fingers for more..
  SO I guess that your lucky when they feed on FTR, I saw where that Python breeder B. CLark always feed his with a long snake tong hook like clamp to safely stimulate the strike and feeding response. The snake lets out a roar of a hiss and you could hear the whoosh of the large retics strike...This was on the discovery channel awsome video of his facility  They are snakes who will slurp off  the floor and  then there are some who need that visual and physical activity..    hehehe
  we know where this is going cwm13.gif   ::) :-X
   doug   cwm4.gif
 here's a shameless plug of my critters in a nd out of their cages
http://photo.redtailboa.org/my-pets

[Jonathan_Brady]

ok, here is my feeding ritual.
i have two snakes housed together, so i put them in their own separate feeding tubs for each feeding. the others stay in their cages (now they do, i use to do the same with them). here is what does the trick for me. when i thaw my rats out, i don't let them just sit out and thaw, i put them in a tupperware container with no lid and set them under the faucet and run cool water on them until they are submerged. once they are thawed (grab them with the tongs and shake them and their body does the wave in the water), you can either poor out the water they are in and replace it with WARM water, or you can just run warm water into the cool water until it reaches a warm temperature. after they have sat in the warm water for just a few minutes, i run hot water on them to heat them up. i let them sit in the hot water for a minute and then i take them out and let them sit on a couple of paper towels and i dry them off a bit. NOTE: when you take them out of the water, try to keep the rats hair going in it's natural direction. not sure if it makes a difference or not, but it *could* irritate their throats while going down (it may not, but it's better to be safe than sorry). once they are dried off, i grab them with the tongs by the tail and open up the cage or feeding tub and i just hold it there for them to strike or in the case of my guyanans, i just toss it in there and they eventually find it (less than a minute no matter where they are in the cage) and one will strike and coil and the other just swallows it. i think if i put the rat thing from the princess bride in with angel, she would just try to come up and swallow it without constricting, she's so lazy. sometimes, i'll try to get her to strike by moving around the rat with the tongs and then i'll make her struggle with it but i rarely do that b/c my tongs aren't that long and she's approaching full grown size.
anyway, that's what i do, give it a try if you haven't already. i think the heating up makes all the difference in the world. oh, you don't necessarily have to heat up the whole thing if you prefer not to follow these steps. you can just do what you always do and then just run the head under hot water and dry it off. same effect.
oh, one more thing, i usually leave a little water on the rats b/c it's just another way to get a little water into their bodies to make sure they are perfectly hydrated.
good luck!
jonathan brady

[Sojourn]

All our boas eat frozen thawed rats, with one exception with one neonate one time. He arrived here sick and almost listless and a live pinkie mouse was the only thing he had any interest in, but that is another story.

I thaw my rats in water also... Cold for about 45+ minutes(depending on how many I'm thawing out)... Warm for 5-10 minutes... Then hot just before feeding. They are dabbed off a little but some water is left to help with hydration, then offered from the end of tongs, and jiggling is not necessary. All our boas are fed in their cages now, but when they were babies, they were fed in a box so they would not begin their life associating the opening of their cage with being fed. Now, with our smallest girl(pic included), I just put her on the other side of her cage, then offer the rat to her. So far, that has worked like a charm.

None of our boas have ever been finicky. I guess we're just lucky so far.

[chris_peterman]

Another way to heat rats up is to fill a bucket about 1/4 full of really hot water and then put a second bucket in side the one with water.Put the rats inside the empty bucket and put a lid on it.In about 10-15 you'll have a warm rat thats perfectly dry.

[Ryan]

you could "brain" the rats. that is cut a slit in the head and expose some of the brain cwm8.gif. I have a picky hogg that refuses to eat sometimes and if I brain them he gets them every time, fast too.

[surfimp]

My baby, Angelica, is a real pig. Usually, I can simply the F/T rat in her feed box, then slip her in, and cover the box (quickly). When I come back in 30 minutes or so she's usually gotten the rat down on her own.

Sometimes, however, she doesn't seem to "get" that this thing which smells like food actually is food, because it isn't moving. I guess she wants some entertainment with her dinner. In those situations, I have to grab the rat with some tongs and do the "dead rat dance" by dangling the hapless rodent from its tail/hind legs. A few seconds of that gets sweet little Angelica quite excited, and her aim is excellent.

The only sketchy part with the last bit is picking up the rat from the bottom of her feed box while she's still in it. My tongs are pretty short, and she's getting pretty long. Of course, because all of the air around her smells like food, and the tongs/my hand are moving, the tongs and/or my hand simply must be the food, as far as she's concerned. So we play "Draw!" and I usually win, but she's getting better. Like I said, her aim is good.

I need some new tongs! :)