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Feeding Question: Ready for "larger" pinks?

T

Tess

New member
Okay, I have the feeling I'm way overfussing about them again, but I have another quck question.

The three little scalekids have successfully fed twice now on quite-small, probably about day-old, three gram pinkies. No troubles getting them down, barely visible lumps after 24 hours, apparently fully digested within 48, poo passed, out and hunting for more? by hour 47 or so. Since they have been in my care I weighed them once after the first feeding (9,8, and 9 grams) and once after the second feeding (10, 9, and 10 grams).

My situation is this: I got frozen pinkies from another local supplier because the pre-packaged T-Rex "Arctic Mice" at PetCo are too pricey and I haven't sat down to work out my order from TMF yet. These pinkies are a bit heftier--bigger around, a tad more visible fuzz/whiskers to them, and a weight of about 4 grams each rather than three. I don't think they're quite "fuzzies" yet, but I've never seen a "fuzzie" so I might be wrong. They look like they would *just* slide in under the 1.5 x width rule, but I'm terrible at spacial reasoning...!

For the record, I'm roughly attempting to follow The Munson Plan. When I feed again on Saturday or Sunday, can I feed them these larger pinkies? Or would that be pushing it and asking for trouble?
 
Have you had problems with them not eating or with them being picky eaters? If not, I think its perfectly fine to move them up to a larger pinkie. If the food bump is barely visible after 24 hours then it sounds like they need a larger prey item anyways.
 
Since I've had them, they've only had two feeding days, and both went fairly well. Two of them (the larger ones) are absolutely voracious. The smaller of the two ladies is a bit shy and needed a bit of a mousey-dance the first time and complete dark and quiet the second time, but nothing I would call "trouble" or "picky" based on what I've read here.
 
You could cut the mice in half and feed two halves, that would make them MUCH easier to digest.
 
Oh, good call! I already slit the mice I feed them but that would just be taking it one step further.

Then I would chain feed one half, then the other, right?

And I assume you mean lengthwise cut, not, errr, truncated?
 
I'd cut them in half crosswise, or even thirds. You can do it after they are thawed, it's not very messy. I have cut pinks in half lengthwise, frozen, and then thawed them to feed single halves to a snake that regurgitated- it's way messier than crosswise cuts. I just put the two or three pieces in there and the snake just eats them. But then I rinse the snake in cool water when he is done, because the mice are a little juicy. And wash his feeding container.

Once you get up to fuzzy size, if you've been halving snakes for a regurgitator, it gets too gross, so I go to super-deep, super-many slittings.
 
Thanks, all! I thought I'd update--I wound up hedging my bets, so to speak, and feeding the smallest of the "larger" pinks, with deep, DEEP cuts through them. I didn't quite halve/third them, but the pieces of pinkie were only connected by wee bits of tissue, so it chained down nicely.

The two granites managed to be very polite and neat about it, but the bloodred girl (by far the most voracious feeder) wallowed around in mouse-goo quite happily, ha! I rinsed her off before popping her back in her cage.

They all got them down just fine--took a bit longer than usual, but even the most hesitant feeder of the three seemed much more excited about the "smells" coming from the more deeply cut mice, and nobody's lumps look too untoward.

Thanks very much again! This place is great!
 
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