Q? How do you know who is eating???

[GartersRock]

I feed mine separately (OK I cheat, my adult DK's eat perched in my hand)

We have a dozen "feeding boxes" and place the snakes in them one at a time with food.

That way I know who eats, and what...

Same here! Deli cups and feeding boxes so I can be sure they all eat. My litter of 29. I have to do it that way or some little ones might not get to eat.
But yeah. All my snakes get fed separately.

[reptile3]

Same here! Deli cups and feeding boxes so I can be sure they all eat. My litter of 29. I have to do it that way or some little ones might not get to eat.
But yeah. All my snakes get fed separately.

Maybe I should try that too!!! Thanks

[Garter_Gertie]

Well... I tried the feeding in a feeding thingie with Peepers and Jeepers and it was more hassle and stress than they liked.

What I do now is... Who said this? Dewclaw? Put the food on a plastic like cottage cheese container lid and I watch; OR I put in a small ceramic bowl and watch, and Peeps and Jeeps now eat. IN FACT they've gotten to the point they ignore the mooshed worm garnish and pull the cut-in-half pinkie out from underneath!

I use the dish more with Peeps and Jeeps and the lid with The Blues Brothers. But I watch both to a) make sure I know who's eating so I can 'target' the non-eating one next time and b) to make sure substrate is not ingested. Thus far it seems the reptibark stuff does not adhere to yummy food.

However, I'm not going to give up watching.

[infernalis]

Maybe I should try that too!!! Thanks

One thing that I have found that applies with all my snake species..

I have a few "fussy eaters" so I lock them in the feeding box with food.

Example, I have a couple "nervous" adult male garters, I place 2 pinks, 1 cut night crawler (thirds) and a couple flopping live minnows in a tote, and lock the snake in there, make a few posts on here, then go check on them. The food is usually gone after 15-20 minutes.

The little milk babies, I lock them into a deli cup with a thawed pinky overnight. Next morning the pinks are almost always gone.

Fussy DK snakes, lock them in a small box or deli cup with some worms or slugs and some yanked up grass, and leave it overnight.

My bigger Colubrids, I have a very large flat rock in each cage, I just place 2-3 F/T mice on the rock and go to bed, gone by morning.

The Royal Python I have to "tease feed" warmed up food items dangled from tongs.

We had too many incidents whenever communal feeding was tried, so I gave it up completely.

[Loren]

Wayne makes a good point. Ideally, communal feedings should ALWAYS be supervised. Even the most non-snake-eaters have been known to swallow a cagemate that was connected to the other end of a food item.

[infernalis]

Extracting a sibling that is 50 percent down is not much fun....


They both made it, but is was scary enough to drive home the point.

[Tori]

Extracting a sibling that is 50 percent down is not much fun....

I've done that more than once.....I never feed as a group anymore, especially the babies. But trying to get them into deli cups are a nightmare for me. I have a bunch of small buckets with lids that I use. For the larger snakes I use a five gallon bucket and usually sit there and watch them, all but the stubborn ones, eat.

[adamanteus]

I always feed my snakes in situ, in groups. I even feed my babies in large groups. I find the frenzied competition that ensues is a valuable trigger to encourage the more reluctant feeders to eat. But I always supervise feedings, I don't blink, if I can help it, because accidents can happen very quickly.