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Snecklifter
Yearling
United Kingdom
144 Posts |
 Posted - 19/06/2012 : 11:45:27
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I have deduced that Royals (probably all snakes) have an in-built ability to, just by looking, decide if a prey item is beyond their capacity to deal with.
The reason i say this is because my snake, who is now nearly two years old, has only refused to eat about 4 times in total. In the last two weeks, he's refused twice, despite not having been fed for 2 weeks prior to the first refusal.
A few weeks before this, i'd increased his prey from weaner rats to small rats, I bought 5 loose rats and picked some small, some larger. I started him out on the smaller of the rats and he took and swallowed them up with no real issues. However, now we've moved on to the larger of the rats and although he's interested (he sniffs about, and looks like he 'wants' to strike at it) he eventually decides that he's not having any of it.
Now, he's 876g in weight, the larger of the rats is probably about 100g in weight, and i must admit, look rather large in comparison to his head (if not his body). Since he is such a good feeder normally, I suspect that although he's hungry, he's thinking, no way, i'll not get my chops round that!
He's a t adifficult age, a weaner is too small and a small rat is (probably)too big. Considering a return to weaners.
Thoughts? |
0.0.1 Royal 'Trowzer' |
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ppl_clectr
Yearling
Canada
226 Posts |
Posted - 19/06/2012 : 12:04:27
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| I would go back down a size. I have offered a larger item, been refused, and returned to the same snake with a smaller one, only to have it scoffed down in no time. |
SherriR |
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hodgie
Fully Grown Royal
United Kingdom
1197 Posts |
Posted - 19/06/2012 : 13:52:19
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| He`s also around the age where he will .start to slow down, quite a few of my male ones have. They dont all keep on growing, i have a pastel male who is nearly 7 and just over 1kg. |
Royals owned "lots"
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Snecklifter
Yearling
United Kingdom
144 Posts |
Posted - 21/06/2012 : 09:17:11
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I bought a pack of weaner rats, and offered one last night. He struck immediately and scoffed it. Proving that the issue had, indeed, been the increase in size of the prey.
Its quite interesting because I selected five small rats from the snmallest available to some bigger ones. My intention was to start him off on the smaller ones and build him up to the larger ones. He seemed to have little trouble with the smaller ones, but seemed overawed by the larger ones. Snakes clearly have an acute ability to judge whether a prey item is too large, because the difference between the smaller small rats and the larger small rats was only about 15g.
I suspect that the snake doesn't actually know that whats being dangled in front of it as dead already, I suppose they instinctively assume its alive, otherwise, why would they strike? When they see a rat that's a bit on the large side, they must think, i'm not going near that, it could have lumps out of me.
All fascinating stuff, well, to me it is anyway... |
0.0.1 Royal 'Trowzer' |
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Danno91
Sub Adult
United Kingdom
521 Posts |
Posted - 23/06/2012 : 21:18:27
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I can only speek on personal experience but I have once over fed my female normal I bought medium rat instead of a weaner I didn't realise till she was scoffing it down, you could see the bulge for 5 days and she refused to eat for a month I am now far more attentive to what I am feeding and buying I can only put this down to my inexperience at the time
All I can say is on that day she must have been hungry enough to try and succeed |
http://www.facebook.com/DannosRoyalPythons?ref=hl |
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The Size of Prey Items
