d_virginiana
12-03-2011, 01:17 PM
Over Thanksgiving I finally got Houdini (my blind adult) to take food from hand again! I'd been getting sort of worried. After he stopped taking food from hand, my mother had been chopping fish and putting them in a small dish inside his tank for him to eat. He was eating, but nowhere near the amount that he would eat before, and starting to get a little thin for my liking. I think it was mostly because he's not overly fond of scavenging not-completely-fresh fish bits from a dish. A separate feeding tank is also out of the question, as he has a massive freak-out whenever he's put down in an unfamiliar place or even when something in his tank is moved around. I think a lot of this weird behavior is because he lost his sight relatively quickly, over a span of just a couple months and he's still not sure how to make up for it?
Anyways, it took about twenty minutes of working with a single half-worm, but I finally got a technique down, and he's eating from hand again! It's pretty tricky to walk that line between getting him interested in the food and startling him, but I'm hoping he'll get used to it. Even just over Thanksgiving break he was starting to gain a bit of weight back, so I'm hoping I'll be able to teach my mom how to do it over Christmas. She doesn't really like snakes as pets, but she's very patient with trying to care for mine when I'm not able to.
Anyways, it took about twenty minutes of working with a single half-worm, but I finally got a technique down, and he's eating from hand again! It's pretty tricky to walk that line between getting him interested in the food and startling him, but I'm hoping he'll get used to it. Even just over Thanksgiving break he was starting to gain a bit of weight back, so I'm hoping I'll be able to teach my mom how to do it over Christmas. She doesn't really like snakes as pets, but she's very patient with trying to care for mine when I'm not able to.