A Guide To Successfully Feeding Difficult Hatchlings

When you buy a hatchling it should be feeding on dead defrosted or live pinkies.  The following notes are intended to help other snake owners to overcome any problems with newborn snakes. There are most likely many other methods and techniques to getting/tricking difficult feeders to take a meal, but these are most of the "tricks" we use.

Newly hatched snakes will not eat until they have shed their skin for the first time.  This is usually 8 to 12 days after hatching.  Some hatchlings are reluctant to feed at first and it may be that in the wild these would not eat until after hibernation.  Unless you can offer conditions that are conducive to hibernation, you may need to stimulate a feeding response.  Don’t handle your snake on the day you intend to offer it food.

Offer your snake a mouse pinkie.  Leave this in the hatchling box for 2 or 3 hours then check.  This works with 95% of hatchlings.

Wait 3 days then offer your snake a second mouse pinkie.  Place this inside the snake’s hiding place and leave in overnight.  This additional security often works.

Still not eating?  Then wait 3 days, wash a pinkie with soap and warm water and rinse thoroughly.  Try offering this overnight.  Oddly enough, this works at times.

Check that living conditions are correct.  Hatchlings are often happier in a small container (a sandwich box with ventilation holes is ideal).  Also check on temperature range (use a thermometer, don’t guess) and offer small hiding places, security is important to any animal.

Try warming a pinkie up to body temperature with your hair dryer before offering it to the snake.

Try offering freshly killed pinkies, the scent of the food animal will be stronger and stimulate a response.  If you smoke try wearing rubber gloves to prevent the smell of tobacco being transferred to the pinkie.

Offering a live pinkie should start the feeding response.  If this is successful wait 3 or 4 days and go back to offering a defrosted pinkie.

Now for the grizzly bit, try slicing  the head of a dead pinkie and offer this to your pet.  The scent of blood and brains sometimes works.

It’s 4 or 5 weeks since your snake shed and it has still not eaten?  Then let’s try something a little more active, try holding a pinkie in a pair of tweezers and annoying the snake with it.  Don’t touch the snake’s head this just frightens it.  If you’re pet strikes and you release the pinkie then slowly withdraw he/she may well start eating.  It’s worth a try.

Hold your snake behind its head with two fingers and your thumb.  Annoy it by gently tapping its nose with the head of a pinkie.  This often causes the snake to bite the food and if you gently let go of the pinkie the snake will continue to hold on.  Very gently hold the snakehead down (so that the pinkie remains hooked on its teeth) and slacken your grip. Now you need patience, stay very still and wait, the snake will probably drop the pray item several times before he/she eventually starts to eat it.  If time is pressing you can try putting your snake back in its box (always tail first), but the hatchling will probably drop the pinkie.  This is my most successful method of assist feeding hatchlings.

If all else fails it is possible to force food down a hatchling’s throat.  It is best to start with something simple like a 2cm piece of mouse-tail.  Find something that is about 1mm in diameter and made of plastic or metal (a paper clip?).  Roll this over your snake’s bottom lip to open its mouth.  With the mouth open, insert the thick end of the mouse-tail and remove the paper clip.  Hold the snakehead down and wait.  The hairs on the mouse-tail make it difficult for the snake to spit it out, so it swallows the tail.

[ It is also possible to force a whole pinkie down the snake’s throat but this can be very stressful (to you both) and should be a last resort.  You may also be told about pinkie pumps, these are very specialized pieces of equipment and require practice to use properly, and it is all too easy to kill the snake with one. ]