Smaug normally eats like a trooper and will always strike and sometimes coil, since stepping him up to smalls he has been very tentative almost nervous of the mice. Could it be due to the size difference between a fuzzy and a small? I bought some rat pups today (which he ate with his normal gusto) as they are they only thing I can find in between a fluff and a small, hoppers don't exist in any of the ships around me. Do I need to put a larger gap in feeding as they are a bit more fatty? He is just over a year old and just around 100g (he was 97g last weigh in but that was a couple of weeks ago) and fed normally once a week.
I'm having the same issue with one of mine. She's had 2 feeds of the new size and for both ive had to put her in a shoebox and wait for her to eat it, although the 2nd time she did strike at it when I originally offered it. Unfortunately it swung and that put her off. I'm hoping she'll slowly get used to the new size and hair.
Where I am we don't have a size between fluffs and smalls. As long as the small isn't more than 1.5 times wider than Smaug's widest part then he'll be fine.
You can feed him rat pups if you want to. Because he's so young and still growing I wouldn't worry about lengthening the gap between feeds at the moment.
Thanks he is such a sensitive little soul I think he got a little scared. I've only got six of the rat pups so should be enough to give him a little boost before he goes back onto smalls. Hopefully he will be scoffing them down with the same enthusiasm.
So Smaug has eaten rat pups like a champ for 5 weeks and broken the 100g mark. I tried a small mouse again this week, he has sat in his cold hide for 4 days solid and is now making me worry!
I'm glad that he took the small ok after eating the rat pups. I've had to give my 'little girl' mice for her last two feeds because I couldn't get any rats and amazingly she ate them. Admittedly I warmed and brained them and scented them with a bigger rat I had. And, of course, she had to be left in her box for a while. But she ate .
Please try not to worry about Smaug being in the cool end. He knows he's got the warm end there if he wants it and may be sneaking over when you're asleep or out. I'm sure they do these things just to worry us .
He really does know how to worry me! He has taken a bit of a break from his growth spurt over the winter months so it could just be him having a bit of a cool off. I've handled him today and the little food bump has disappeared but no poop just yet!
Naughty smaug again! He has been back on smalls for almost two months has shot up to a whopping 143g but this week had refused to eat.
After his trip to the vets in Jan for his poop issues I thought we were out of the woods with the small mouse complex. He was gaining 7-10g per week on the smalls so I want him to stay on the correct sized food for his size.
Would moving him to 10 days between feeds be ok? I'm thinking that as he is taking a while to poop after feeding (he gets a bath on Saturdays if he has not fully emptied since being fed on Sundays) he might not be hungry enough on a seven day schedule.
Some snakes work better on different feeding schedules so it may be that feeding every 10 days would suit him better. It is probably worth a try. Just keep an eye on his weight to make sure he's still putting on weight with the bigger gap between feeds.
He really is a monkey! I should change the name of this to the smaug feeding saga! I'll give him a try at 10 days and see how he goes. He seemed so uninterested I think he is not hungry enough on 7days gap.
Rat pups?
Posted - 30/11/2014 : 19:35:44
. Please let us know how he gets on.
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