someone asks a substantial price for a captive-bred
elapid, appreciate that it may have taken months of
patience just to get it feeding, and that whoever
raised it is just asking for fair recompense for a lot of
blood, sweat and tears. with a snake is overnight. Any snake that doesn’t
take the pinky in this time is also probably being
stressed by the movement, and as a general rule it
is better to remove uneaten mice as soon as
possible.
Importantly, assist-feeding and force-feeding
techniques, as described below, require manual
handling of your snakes. Make no mistake; many
small elapids have the potential to deliver a nasty
bite, possibly with potentially-fatal consequences,
so great care and preparation is necessary. With
that in mind let’s look at some feeding techniques in
detail. Scenting, de-scenting and an unusual starter.
Odour plays a significant role in stimulating or
inhibiting a snake from feeding. Some snakes
appear to have an aversion to the smell of pinky
mice and a simple first step to take is to gently wash
a thawed pinky in warm water. This is often enough
to remove the inhibitory odours that will prevent a
neonate from taking it.
‘When someone asks a substantial price for a
captive-bred elapid, appreciate that it may have taken
months of patience to get it feeding.’
Low intervention methods.
These techniques use substitute dietary items but
employ different methods to have them accepted by
the neonate. Substitute food items include pinky
rodents (generally mice to start) or fish. One key
element for success is to ensure that the snake’s
lodging is warm enough, with sufficient humidity to
ensure clean shedding (but not wet) and ample
refuge from visual disturbances. Inadequate
housing can prevent a snake that would otherwise
feed from doing so. Getting this right is the best
investment in the overall process you can make.
Furthermore, in order for any of the low intervention
methods to work, it is essential that the snake must
actually be hungry. Nature gives small snakes a
head start with a rich supply of yolk to tide them
over until they can hunt their own prey. Newborn
snakes that are still utilising yolk may not be easily
provoked into eating unnatural prey items. If they’re
hungry it’s often much easier and this might be a
couple of weeks after being born/hatched. However,
don’t wait too long before getting some food into a
neonate elapid, as they can rapidly deteriorate to a
state from which it is difficult or impossible to
recover.
The ‘lucky dip’ method.
Reliant upon a bit of good luck, this merely consists
of putting a pinky in the enclosure and hoping that
the snake eats it. Surprisingly, this does work with a
small number of species and sometimes individuals
within a species. Sometimes movement is important
and a live pinky will be accepted rather than a
thawed one. From a welfare perspective, pinky mice
that are eaten by snakes are killed quickly so there
aren’t too many concerns. It is cruel, however, to
leave live pinkies in enclosures for days to slowly
expire. The longest that a live pinky should be left
Other small snakes may be stimulated to eat an
unnatural food item by the scent of their typical
prey, and many keepers find skink scent to be most
beneficial. The scent can be transferred simply by
putting a pinky in a small container with a skink.
Wiping a small amount of skink faeces on the pinky
will work in some cases, and sloughed skin can
work as well. If you have a dead skink in the freezer
(assuming you live in one of those states that allow
the feeding of skinks to snakes), a tiny bit of tail in
the mouth of a thawed pinky is probably the best
method. Some snakes will prefer the food item to be
moved, while others may take it if left in the
enclosure overnight.
Scenting can also be done with frogs, fish and
beaten eggs. Amazingly, Victorian herpetocultural
pioneer Brian Barnett had some success using
Peck’s fish paste with juvenile snakes in years gone
by! One product, ‘T-Rex Lizard Maker’, was even
produced commercially for this purpose, however it
appears to have been discontinued. A pin can be
used to puncture the brain of a thawed pinky, and
this may also stimulate interest in feeding.
Nigel Sowter, a Victorian keeper who specialises in
Tiger Snakes, has successfully coaxed a number of
elapid species to take small strips of ox heart as
their first meals. I have personally used ox heart
with Blue-bellied Black Snakes (Pseudechis
guttatus), and others have had similar success
starting Pygmy Mulga Snakes (Pseudechis weigeli).
Ox heart can be rubbed onto pinky mice after a few
feeds, and snakes well established on ox heart will
readily take rodents scented with this unusual
starter.
Concealing the food item in a refuge.
One technique I have used to get problem feeders
going is to put the prey item in a small cardboard