MonsterFeeders.com:Rapid Growth for Your Reptiles

No matter what food you offer your snake, monitor, or other reptile, sooner or later you’ll be faced with a finicky feeder. Whether it’s a female retic that has just dropped eggs or a baby boa that needs to eat for the first time, over the years we’ve found a few tricks that entice the most stubborn reptiles to eat.

First of all, your reptiles probably won’t be flexible so you will have to be. Be ready to try several options until you find those that work with your snake or reptile.

Second, if your snake quits feeding, don’t panic. Most breeds* of snakes can miss several feedings with no ill effect.

• Does your snake look healthy? Unless it’s skinny or showing odd behavior, it’s probably okay.
• Does your reptile have adequate water? With few exceptions*, most snakes need constant access to fresh water.
• Don’t take your reptile’s temperature. Check the temperature of its cage. If your snake is either too hot or too cold, it may refuse to eat.

Babies that just won’t eat.

Don’t beat your head against the wall (It doesn’t help; it just hurts!). Often some youngsters just need a little push to begin feeding. The following steps will lead you to feeding success.

1. If you are having trouble with first food items that are frozen-thawed, try live pinkies.
2. If live pinkies don’t do the trick then try opening up the skull of a frozen pinky to expose the brains. Most reptiles just love brain food!
3. When brain food doesn’t work, we’ve had success with dipping the feeder item in chicken broth and then introducing it to the reptile.

Only as a last resort, force feed your baby snake. Force feeding reptiles creates stress for both of you, but force feeding can have a very negative effect on your reptile.

If you must force-feed, use a good pair of hemostats to gently manipulate a very small food item into your snake’s mouth and then gently work the food down your snake’s throat. Once the pinky or other small food item is past the neck of your snake, take your thumb and slowly massage it down the body. When the massage stops moving the food, the reason is probably that the food item is mostly in the snake’s stomach. Some snakes will begin to work it down themselves after you get it started.

Some of these same ideas will work for finicky older snakes as well.

Making the Switch to Monster Piglets

The more aggressive feeders like retics, burms, and anacondas are generally just plain, good-feeding reptiles and usually have no problems eating or switching foods. But in the rare instance they do become finicky, these are the methods to bring them back to eating.

Sometimes, switching or trying to get a juvenile or adult snake to switch food items can be as time consuming as getting a newborn snake to eat. It’s important to remember that as long as your snake looks healthy and has a healthy environment, missing a meal or two won’t harm it. That said, you can go ahead and let the snake miss a couple of meals if it refuses the new food item. If it doesn’t eat the new food item you offer, let your snake get a bit hungrier.

Sometimes it’s best to offer a new food when your snake is in “feed mode.” When a snake does accept the small food item that it’s used to eating, it often goes into a sort of “feed mode”. This is your chance to introduce a new food item. For instance, when you are switching from rats to Monster piglets, if you are used to feeding two jumbo rats, feed one and then offer a Monster piglet of about the same size. If it won’t take the piglet, then you’ll need to decide if your snake needs to eat more. If the snake is full-bodied with no or very few wrinkles, let it go until next feeding time. When your reptile does accept the piglet along with its usual food item, keep following this procedure for several more feedings until you are sure your snake is used to the new feeder item.

The next approach that has worked for us came from one of the old-school snake breeders. Tie the old and the new food item together so that when the snake starts to feed it will eat both food items. Again, after a few times the snake should become used to the new feeder item. Otherwise you may have to draw this technique out a bit more. If you try this method, be sure to use string made from a digestible material such as hemp twine or cotton string.

If you have more questions or concerns, please contact us at MonsterFeeders. We’ll be glad to do what we can to help you get your animal feeding.

*Finally, although we have bred numerous types of snakes over the years and these techniques work well for us, be sure to check documentation specific to your snake’s breed to ensure its health and well-being.