Feeding issue ...

[FunkyRes]

I have a beautiful female lavender Cal King -



She was one of my two best feeders - taking f/t rodents right out of my hand.

Gave me a nice clutch of 5 eggs (due to hatch *very* soon) and then after a couple meals proceeded to try and double clutch w/o a second mating, resulting in 6 infertile eggs - including one that I had to help her pass. By help her pass, I mean I counted the bands from her vent to where the egg was (palpate) and when it hadn't moved, I carefully gently palpated it down about an inch or so - next day she passed it.

But she still refused to eat. I tried hoppers instead of mice. No dice. I tried fuzzies instead of hoppers. No dice.

Now - she's really skinny. Unlike my amel, she stopped eating while gravid. After her first clutch she ate a few meals but then stopped in her attempt to double clutch and hadn't eaten since.

I was considering force feeding her a fuzzy but I tried one more thing - an anole.

Kings are largely reptile eaters in the wild, so I thought offering a reptile *might* do the trick. It sure did - she readily consumed the anole.

However - there's another possibility. I looked over the feeding records, and last time she ate was before my RodentPro order arrived. She's never eaten a RodentPro rodent, all the rodents she has eaten are from local pet store.

I've heard of snakes that have refused rodents when vendor is switched before, and I'm wondering if maybe that is issue. I think it probably is the bad clutch, but I can't ignore that the switch to RodentPro happened at the same time. All my other snakes take the RP rodents no problem.

On monday (I want to make sure she doesn't regurge the anole first) I think I may try a couple frozen mice from the local pet store - but has anyone here had problems with snakes going off feed when switching rodent vendors?