Our son has been begging for a corn snake for years. They are quite friendly, even wild ones. So, that was his a Christmas present. Harvey is a year old and has a beautiful 35 gallon cage our son ordered with grandma’s Christmas money. Harvey has been dutifully eating his pinky rats weekly. Until today. Not interested. I think this one is slightly older (6-9 days old, but I’m not sure). It’s in my hand right now. It got cold when the snake rejected it. Now what? My own ethics guide me here. I have KMR left over from the summer of kittens. I can keep it going, but it’s rate of growth will be faster than the snake. Is this our new pet?! 
Yep, it’s your new pet. 
A friend has rats, and she says they are great pets - smart, affectionate, and relatively clean. And infinitely more cuddly than a snake, IMO . . .
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Rat. I got him to lick some KMR off my palm. Might try him with the snake again before giving up. Every two hour feedings are rough.
I’m sorry for the update, to those that aren’t comfy with this idea, but the rat is no more. I’m removing the picture….
We’re had pet rats. They’re lovely. It makes me sad to feed the snake, but he rejected the frozen ones.
I’d try to feed it again, it’s pretty unlikely the little fella would survive even with all the right care, if I’m not mistaken?
And - I would switch your lovely corn snake over to pre-killed and/or frozen/thawed immediately. I’ve got a stomach of iron and even I get a little mlech over dropping a baby anything into a cage to meet its demise via predator.
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Agreed. I can’t stomach the idea of feeding live animals, esp. helpless babies, to a ‘pet’ snake.
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Yep, go to frozen/thawed. Much easier and more humane. I got my corn snake, technically my daughter’s, from Laura Britvec, a fellow COTHER. I think her Coth name was LauraB.
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We tried again after the rat was warmer and more active. It went well. One issue is that our dogs and cats get excited by the snake feeding. They weren’t obnoxious before, but now that they can tell what’s going to happen, they were underfoot and Harvey felt shy. Once the other pets were locked up and Harvey had some privacy, he had an appetite. He just finished gulping down the tail.
Snakes are strange creatures, but I like Harvey a lot more than the baby rats, so it isn’t so hard to feed him.
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We tried several different ways, but we couldn’t get him to eat the frozen rats. If we can feed at the same time every week, we should have more luck trying to switch him back (at least that’s what the local snake expert said).
Lauruffian. She was a delightful poster. I learned so much about snakes.
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The prey will get older as the snake gets bigger, but I understand. A quick kill is best. The first time was clumsy, but he’s better now.
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Oh cool! Do you still have him/her?
I hope Laura sees this
This is why I resisted the idea of a snake pet for a couple of years, but he is a nice snake. Very cuddly and friendly. For a snake.
He’s adorable. I love snakes. I always protect them when I find them in my yard.
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Me too! I appreciate their ability to limit the rodent population on the farm. Irony is real here. Ethics are weird, but I told our son that if the snake doesn’t eat a baby rat, it must be cared for. That’s the deal. We got it figured out today, but if it happens again, the baby rat will be cared for. That thing of KMR in the fridge doesn’t expire for at least six months. We should have him on frozen by then. The issues aren’t just ethical from the rat’s standpoint. As his prey gets bigger, they pose a bigger risk of injury to the snake. It’s safer to feed frozen.
What’s the difference between our pet chickens and the ones in the freezer? The pets have names. That’s the only difference at the end of the day. All chickens have the same capacity and ability to be pets. Wild rats aren’t a good idea as pets, but they have the same nature as Suzy rat and Charlie rat (our past pets).
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I did learn today that feeding baby rats is possible. They’re only on every two hour feedings for the first week and then every 3-4 hour feedings. They start weaning by 21 days. I did successfully get little baby rat to lick the KMR off my palm, so I passed that hurdle. A bit easier than feeding baby kittens. The downside to actually trying to rear a baby rat is that I don’t know how well cared for the mother rat is and how inbred she may be since I buying ‘feeder rats’ at the pet store. I can only imagine how ridiculously tame (but lonely) a hand raised rat would be. I wonder if they could socialize well with other rats once they were old enough, or if they would have off cues? Anyway, I didn’t have to find out today. Hopefully, the snake will go to frozen soon and I won’t have to worry about it.
While there was really very little that was more revolting than the containers of frozen rats in the freezer my brother I think would pop them in a plastic bag and drop in some hot water to thaw them and make them more appealing to his snakes.
And for those of you who dislike the idea of feeding live animals to reptiles, let me tell you that oh you haven’t lived until your brother thinks it’s a great idea to throw in live prey to his 5ft monitor lizard to tear to bits. At dinner time. Dinner accompanied by shrieks of something being torn to bits. My mother and I ran out of the house in tears more than a few times. We had to scream at him to feed that horrid creature when we weren’t home.
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Wow, that sounds awful!
We have frozen food for Harvey. It is so much easier because you can buy packs and keep it in the freezer. We do the thawing out and everything, we just need to work on presentation. We’re going to try another ratcicle next week with all the dogs and cats locked up.
