I cannot express how happy I am to tell you guys that Fifi
has eaten her first meal in 5 MONTHS! It was only a large mouse (she’s
usually on medium rats) but at least it’s something. She started fasting
before Christmas, and I figured it was because she wanted to breed and that after
a couple of months she would start eating again… but no! She held out on
me!
As I’ve said in a previous post, she has fasted
before for about 6 months so I wasn’t super worried. I think it just
depends on the snake… some like to fast every now and then and some of
them hammer down a rat every week like they haven’t been fed for a year
(to be honest I wish she was the latter). But this has definitely put things in
perspective, and I don’t think I’ll be breeding her again. She
dropped 200g of weight in the 5 months which was worrying me the most. So unless
she gains the weight back quickly now that she’s feeding I’m not
going to use her again in my breeding plans; which is a shame because she
produced five beautiful babies on her first go.
While I was waiting for Fifi to finish fasting, I read up
on different ways to get your royal to eat if they have refused food for a long
period of time. There are so many different methods I found and had suggested
to me that I had never heard of before.
Here are some of them:
Chicken soup
One of my friends who works in a reptile shop suggested
defrosting a rodent, then dipping it in warmed chicken soup. The aim is to get
the scent of the chicken onto the rodent, rather than coating it entirely in
soup. I didn’t try this simply because I didn’t have any chicken
soup handy, and I figured it could get a bit messy.
Dirty mouse bedding
I managed to get some used bedding from my local pet shop.
You need to put the bedding in a container next to the vivarium a few hours
before feeding time. The scent of the bedding makes the snake get excited that
there may be prey nearby and therefore gears them up for feeding. When I tried
this it didn’t work, but Fifi was definitely interested by the smell so I
think if she wasn’t so stubborn it would have been successful. I
recommend this method!
Cleaning the rodent
Another friend suggested that after heating the rodent I
quickly wash it with washing up liquid. This is to take away any smell from the
rodent so it takes the ‘hunting for prey’ back to simple heat
seeking rather than scent. I also tried this method which didn’t work
either! Fifi wasn’t interested at all in the rodent and just turned her
nose up at it (I don’t think she likes Fairy Liquid too much).
Good old hairdryer
Now generally when I’m preparing to feed my snakes I
will get all the rodents out of the freezer the night before so that by the
next day they are fully defrosted. I then put some very warm (but not boiling)
water into a jug, put the rodents in a plastic sandwich bag and tie it up, then
submerge them in the water until they are heated up. This time, I tried using a
hairdryer to heat the mouse. I opened Fifi’s vivarium door, sat next to
it with the mouse in hand, then started heating it up with the hairdryer. This
makes the scent of the mouse waft into the vivarium (think along the lines of
waking up on a Sunday and smelling bacon coming from the kitchen)! Well let me
tell you, I’ve never seen her head poke out of her hide so fast. Once I
was satisfied that the mouse was heated enough and Fifi was fully interested, I
got my tongs and dangled the mouse in the vivarium… and in a matter of
seconds she struck at it! As you can imagine, I highly recommend this method of
feeding!
These are just a few of the methods I tried, but I will be
doing another blog post on a wider range of ways to get your Royal Python
feeding again. If anyone has had their snake fast for a long period of time,
you will understand the relief I felt when she finally ate… lets just
hope she eats next week as well!
If you have any stories or suggestions for posts about
Royal Python feeding, please leave a comment below!
xoxo
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