How to get my Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake to eat frozen / thawed mice?

If you have a Blue Beauty snake or are planning on getting one AND you've done your research you've read "voracious appetite" and "amazing feeding response" over a thousand times. VBBs are said to be eager feeders.

When I first brought this bugger home she hadn't been fed on a frozen/thawed pinky ever, so one of my first missions was to switch from live to thawed preys. The path was full of fails, let me tell you.

It was a bumpy ride from the start. I happened to attempt to feed The Fury while in blue. My corn never bothered, but this one has her schedule. If she's in blue OR she is about to be in blue, she doesn't feed. And if she's offered food when in blue, she will attack it and flee, just as if you were wiggling a piece of plastic in her face.

She eventually shed, and I fed her a live fuzzy. It was my first time ever and, mildly put, it just confirmed I'm not into snakes for that. But her belly was full and I was happy.

After that, I introduced Furia to frozen/thawed mice. I used several methods that I will explain below:

1. At first, Furia wasn't familiar with my smell and feared me. I am guessing she hadn't been handled much on her two months' life, and she was reluctant to feed in any human's presence. So I defrosted my pinkies in a glass jar (how & why here) and heated them by putting the jar in a casserole with hot water. It takes a while, I am not going to lie, but putting mice in the microwave (defrost setting) didn't have a happy outcome so...

After that, I put the warm pinky in her terrarium close to where she was hiding, covered 2/3 of the terrarium with a blanket and let her do her business. Or not. 

The reason why I used the blanket in such a way was to make Furia feel unseen and safe; and it worked. Try not to cover the whole terrarium though, VBBs are diurnal snakes and will most gladly eat during the day; it's best not to fool them into thinking it's still dark...

2. If your snake doesn't seem interested by the prey you're offering, it may be because it doesn't smell like food, or not enough to trigger its apetite. When that happened, I brained the pinkies before I heated them, offered them to Furia and 99% of the time they were "gone" when I came back. 

3. Still in the scent section, when you want to get your snake to eat thawed mice, you need to compensate for the lack of prey movement with scent. The first way to keep the mice scent is to defrost it in a closed container, preventing it to enter in direct contact with water. The second is to scent it in mice bedding. 

So if your snake doesn't eat and you're willing to try this, it's easy peasy. Just go to an pet shop and ask the seller to give you some mice dirty bedding. Scent the pinky with it and serve.

4. Something else you can do if your snake does not eat is trying different rodent species. Maybe your VBB will be easier to get started on gerbils or rat pups than on mice; it's worth giving it a shot. Some of them also like to feed on lizards when hatchlings. Scenting your pinkies with other rodents' bedding or with a lizard's bodily fluids can also be an option.

5. At one point, Furia stopped feeding altogether. I was quite puzzled, especially after a few successful feeds. So I decided to get her used to be fed in a separate R.U.B.

For this, I first prepare my feeding gear and mice. Then I take The Fury out of her terrarium and put her in the RUB, where I offer her the prey with thongs. 

Tip: it is better to offer the prey on the RUB floor than wiggling it on your snake's face from above. Think on how you would react if an entrecote was coming at you from the sky..! Just like you, a snake will most likely feel intimidated before a fliying pinky ;)

After a month and a half of trial and error, Furia managed to feed on thawed mice without trouble [except when she's in blue]. I don't even need to heat the pinkies anymore.

I hope this was helpful; which method have you tried? 

Scale up!

M.