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Feeding too small snake (runt)

F

Frostbyte

New member
So I have been reading a few threads about runts that are too small to eat the smallest of pinkies, what do you feed a baby like that? This may sound strange, but could you put a pinkie in a blender and make a 'nice' :puke02: drink out of it and try to feed them that or maybe a chicken type baby food. I personally don't have a runt and my babies feed just fine, but as I read those other threads I started to wonder about it. All of my animals have been runts and I tend to have an affinity for finding them. They do usually tend to be the strongest and most well behaved afterall.
 
You'd be surprised what a baby corn can put down. They can eat 1 and 1/2 the size of their body. I have seen week old hatchlings eat pinkies with no problem. I even saw a young juv eat 4 mice in one feeding. Which i do not recommend.
 
The standard procedure is to feed then just the head of a small pinky. Even the smallest runts can usually handle it.
 
I'm experiencing this problem right now. Considering that the smallest pink the pet store by my house sells is about 2-2.5 times the width of my runt, we've had to catch hatchling anoles (thanks to Nanci). I don't have a scale, unfortunately, but I can tell you that this little guy is TINY. Feeding him/her half of a pink head would probably be the same as a pink for a regular hatchling. I hope I don't have to deal with that again next year, but at least I have the experience now.
 
Actually it was your post that brought it to mind. I saw someone else had a runt that unfortunately didn't make it and they were feeding them pink tails, now I know that is a tiny baby if that is all it is eating. So I just figured I would ask.
 
That was probably me. The other runt that I have was the same size (2g). She's eating like a pig. She started out on heads and her last feeding on Friday she ate a 1/2 of pinky body split length wise. These are 1 gram pinks, so very tiny to begin with.

Poor thing could hardly crawl back to her hide her tummy was so big. Her skin was pretty stretched as well. She'll be on 1/2 bodies and heads for a while. She could *possibly* get a full pink down, but I would be concerned she would regurge. So far she's had no problems digesting and she was out looking for more last night.
 
I have been feeding pinky heads and pinky butts. I can make the butts smaller than the head so i alternate between the two cause the heads still seem to big for my little guy. I cant believe that Eos is already up to half a pinky. Dinky still looks like he is going to rip open with a pinky head. But then he did refuse a few meals. He likes to spend the night with his food before he eats it.
 
You all are refering to feeding 1/2s and head and butts to how old of a snake? Just so i can get an idea. Length? Age? Size? Cuz now i'm worried my new 12-14 inch corn won't be able to down a whole pinky. I got a 3 pak of frozens from petco they are real small. I figure she's gotta be at least 5 months.
 
My smallest babies last year were 6 and 7 grams when I got them and they could easily eat small pinks. Those guys are talking about runts who weigh 2-4 grams, I'd guess. For reference, a medium pink is about two grams.
 
Jimmysan00 said:
You'd be surprised what a baby corn can put down. They can eat 1 and 1/2 the size of their body. I have seen week old hatchlings eat pinkies with no problem. I even saw a young juv eat 4 mice in one feeding. Which i do not recommend.
Click to expand...

Although this is true in most cases, it's not always true for runts. These are very tiny, 2-3 grams most of the time. Trying to feed a pink 1 1/2 times the size of the snake isn't feasible. Your chances of the snake regurgitating are greatly increased. Most runts need to be started on much smaller items such as the head or tail of a mouse. If a new born mouse weighs 1 gram or more that's an awful lot to expect a baby that weighs double that to eat.

I have 2 runts. One is 2 grams and one was 3 grams. They both were started on heads of extra small pinkies. The 3 gram baby is now up to 8 grams but I still feed it the extra small pinks with the backs slit to aid it in digestion. When it first started with just the head it looked like it had swallowed a watermelon. LOL
 
oh ok cool thanks for clearifying that for me. So i don't really need to worry about this runt eating stuff since my is at least 12 inches and at least 5 months old? or is that a wrong assumption? I haven't weighed her but i'm sure she's over 2-4 grams.
 
Jimmysan00 said:
oh ok cool thanks for clearifying that for me. So i don't really need to worry about this runt eating stuff since my is at least 12 inches and at least 5 months old? or is that a wrong assumption? I haven't weighed her but i'm sure she's over 2-4 grams.
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The members on this thread are talking about newly hatched babies that they've bred themselves, that came out of the egg very small, so you should be perfectly fine with a corn that's a few months old taking a regular sized pink :)

Hope that helps,
 
Here is a picture of Dinky my runt next to a dime just so you can see how small he really is. Eating a pinky head looks like he swallowed a watermelon ( im stealing your line widget).
IMG_4681.jpg
 
oh wow yeah mine is only a little bigger but now that i looked at her closer she'll do fine with a whole pinky since the ones i have are about the size of a dime. Or my Thumbnail
 
Wow she\he does look like she\he swallowed a watermellon. But I can say that is one of the cutest babies I have ever seen.
 
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