Green Tree Python Feeding Information

Food

You are what you eat - feeding quality rodents is important. Here at Spruce Nubble Farm we raise all of our own mice in our barn using good old lab tubs and we feed Mazuri rodent chow. It really isn't difficult to do this and it will assure you of a clean high quality supply of rodents for less than you can buy them anywhere. Rodents that stink enough to bother people haven't been kept clean.

All of our animals are fed frozen and thawed rodents and this is done for a few reasons. Freezing kills creepy crawlies so you'll have less parasite problems to worry about. Frozen is very convenient and easy and assures you of the proper size rodent quite easily. Frozen is safe for your Green Tree Python.

There are many commercial suppliers of frozen rodents that ship right to your front door, the most popular right now seems to be Rodent Pro. We've used them and they have a solid product. You'll find lots of suppliers online and most of them do a good job.

A word of caution about your local Pet Shop. While there are exceptions as a general rule pet stores do not sell quality rodents and lousy food leads to health problems.

A live mouse is a very very dangerous thing - we do not recommend ever feeding live prey except under special circumstances and with an abundance of caution. In the wild a snake waits for a prey item while hiding and ambushes it, if it misses the prey item runs, escapes, and goes on it's merry way. When we put a live mouse and the snake in a closed container where neither can escape we completely change the way nature is supposed to work - live rodents will bite your snake and cause scars. Live rodents can - and do - kill snakes. Never ever ever leave a live rodent in a cage with a snake unsupervised.

Feeding Time

The prey item should be about the same size around as the thickest part of your GTP, for yearlings that usually means small mice. While some snakes like Carpet Pythons will eat - and even enjoy - prey items that are three or four times as big around as they are it is a mistake to feed large prey to Green Tree Pythons. They don't digest it well and it can lead to prolapse problems. We discuss this on our uncommon problems page. Generally speaking you never need to feed your GTP rats , these are small slender animals and they just don't get that big. Chain feeding a few mice to an adult is pretty simple. Some critters can be picky feeders though and we do have adult GTP's that only eat small rats.

To start with you'll need to thaw out a frozen rodent or two. We only feed our Green Tree Pythons in the evenings and would strongly recommend that you do the same. It is our belief that this "training" is an important component in having happy bite free playtime with your animal.

We take the food out of the freezer around dinner time and place it in a bowl. (any will do, we have specific ones for this). Go ahead and turn some low ambient lights on near your snake's cage - balance between bright enough for you to see what you are doing and dark enough for them to hunt/eat comfortably - a light on a dimmer is great for this. At around 10 PM - which is 2-3 hours after "lights out" - we fill the prey bowl with hot water. At 10:30, drain the bowl and fill it with hot water again. Feed about 5 minutes later, you just want to make sure the food is warm and above ambient cage temperatures.

You'll need some tools. To start try small thumb dressing tweezers and then eventually you'll want something more a bit bigger like this.

You want to make sure to get yourself in the right frame of mind before feeding your Green Tree Python. Calm, relaxed, at ease - pleasantly sharp reflexes - three deep breaths, this is the vibe you are going for. Never force a situation, if something doesn't seem right to you stop what you are doing and try again another day. As Obi-Wan says: "Use the Force Luke, stretch out with your feelings."

Before opening the cage take a good look at your snake, you'll want it awake and in a hunting position. Be aware that you need to move slowly and calmly, some aggressive feeders will strike the glass if they see quick movements outside the cage.

Position the rodent in your tongs correctly, you want to grip the back half of the rodent's body and present the head to your GTP. They often strike aggressively and hitting metal tongs can cause injury, holding the rodent correctly is important, we would not recommend holding the rodent by the tail as this offers no control.

Open the cage and present the prey item, once you and your snake are used to each other you'll know more of the individual habits of your animal but they usually strike right away. If it is your first time feeding a snake immediately let go as soon as they strike, get those tongs out of the way before they get wrapped. You may find that your GTP "drops" the rodent without eating it, if that is the case you want to hang on to the rodent for a bit after it is struck, give it a few quick "I'm alive" jiggles. The balance here is between enough jiggles to get your GTP excited about dinner and literally shaking the snake off the prey item.

Note: If your Green Tree Python wraps your tongs and has a grip on your tool do not attempt to pull them off it or get it back. Accept that you made an error and place the tongs inside the cage with the animal. Just let go and let them have the tool. They will eventually drop the tongs (and usually also the prey time) but that is better than causing a mouth injury by pulling tongs out of a GTP's mouth. Whenever anything goes "wrong" feeding it is important to remain calm.

Ok - so suppose your snake doesn't just strike the prey item like a seagull going for a french fry ? Start by putting the mouse in front of his nose and move the mouse slowly away from him until it is about 5-10" from his nose and then back towards him until it is about 1" away , moving slowly back and forth between those two positions for a few minutes. You want to keep the prey item in close but give the animal enough room to strike. Pay attention , look for tongue flicks and watch the body tensing - they may just need a minute or so to wake up.

Still no dice? Try to tickle the snake's tail with the prey item. It is natural for GTP's to engage in caudal luring, which is flicking the tip of their tail back and forth to attract prey when hunting. Rubbing the tip of their tail can get them hyped up about striking and feeding. You'll find a balance and you want to make a slow progression towards more aggressive poking but generally speaking you'd be shocked at how seriously you can "poke" a GTP when trying to get it to feed.

If your GTP won't eat after you've given all of the above a fair (10-15 minutes) chance you've probably got one of three things happening:

1. Running
This is when they get a spazzy and start moving around the cage, usually rapidly. This is essentially an escape/run type response and when it happens just give up, that snake isn't going to feed for you today. Be aware that this is a situation where the animal frequently try's to jet right out of it's cage - if that happens don't try to pick it up , use a hook to return the animal to it's cage.

2. Defensive Striking
This is when they seem to hit the prey item (or the side of the cage) but won't take a hold or if they do they immediately drop it and won't wrap at all. Sometimes a careful bit of jiggle or presenting the item a few more times can overcome this. Stopping and trying again in 15 minutes can sometimes work. Most of the time though a defensive striker won't feed - this is a common behavior if your Green Tree Python is in a shedding cycle.

3. Won't Strike
Sometimes they just sit there like bumps on a log and won't respond - everyone has moody days and so do GTP's. Sometimes this can indicate common reasons for not wanting to eat like being in a shedding cycle or getting ready to poop - but it is a moment to be concerned and think things over again. Make sure all of your environmental conditions are ok and that your animal is not having a health problem.

So once your Green Tree Python has taken the prey item and wrapped it up you'll want to stay very still, close the cage as quietly as you can, and back away from the enclosure with the stealth of a ninja. For some animals this is not an issue but it is important to remember that after a snake has "killed" a prey item and is getting ready to swallow it takes a good long look around. The reason for this is that when a snake is mid swallow it is very vulnerable and subject to predation. Like a lobster without a shell or seals crossing open water during certain times of year your Green Tree Python will be in a protective mode while getting ready to swallow.

Some animals don't mind if you watch and have little of this response but it is a common problem with GTP's failing to feed successfully.

Speaking of which - either a few hours after you have fed your animal or first thing the next morning you'll want to check the cage to make sure your GTP hasn't "dropped" the food without swallowing it. Failure to catch this quickly will lead to a smell that is as nasty as week old chinese food. Do not ever represent prey items, if it is on the floor of the cage beyond the "5 second rule" it is garbage.

So what do you do if your GTP won't eat?

The first thing to do is to check the record card, if the animal ate the last time you fed it then don't worry about it. Many GTP's refuse once in a while for no apparent reason and that's OK. Animals that are in a shedding cycle often won't feed, animals that are just about to have a stool sometimes won't feed. External factors can impact feeding behavior - weather, stress from noises or lights, almost anything really.

For older animals (and even sometimes young ones) breeding cycles can have a big impact on feeding. The thing to do is to weigh your animal and keep track of that. GTP's that are off feed for "natural" reasons don't show much weight loss (except during the prolonged breeding periods) and the question of whether or not you could have a health problem is best answered by weights to start.

If your animal doesn't feed for a time and you've taken the time to eliminate environmental causes, random problems, and possible natural reasons it may be time to take a look inside your snake's mouth. For this you'll need a bic ballpoint pen. Remove the center/ink portion of the pen so you end up with just the white outer tube. While holding the animal firmly behind the head with one hand use a slow soft careful prying motion at the front of the mouth, when they open up a bit you want to move the pen so that it sits the long way across their mouth opening at the back - gently push the pen to the back of the mouth just like a horse bit. This will allow you to really examine the inside of the mouth. Make sure you have good light - you are looking for any sign of injury or problem like red swollen areas or white cheesy pus. If you see these things visit our common problems page. An animal has to be healthy to feed - don't underestimate the importance of this.

If you've eliminated environmental factors, natural reasons, and you know the animal is healthy then your snake is basically just being a pain in the ass. Sometimes this is just a temporary phase but more often you've got a critter who is not an easy feeder. We believe this is mostly related to training of young animals but regardless it is fair to say some GTP's are finicky. We have a number of adult animals that are this way. There are lots of things you can try and there is no single "correct" answer. Some options: rats instead of mice or vice versa, live food (with extreme caution and supervision), scenting the prey item by rubbing a lizard or a baby chick on it after washing, presenting "dry" rodents by thawing them in sealed plastic bags, dipping the rodent in raw chicken egg, trying different prey types like gerbils, hamsters, etc.

Much of the above can be said to be generic tips for any problematic feeder. You need to experiment and find what works for you. The vast majority of the time once you find "the trick" to what and how your GTP wants to eat they'll be happy with it most of the time.

GTP's should not ever be force fed - the combination of their delicate structures, tendency to fight you, and extreme stress experienced by them leads to our opinion being that you generally do more harm force feeding than anything. Attempts to force feed often lead to an animal's death even when you have lots of experience - it can be done but it is damn tricky, if you've got to get calories in them while battling health problems tube feed them.

Feeding Frequency & Phases

Everyone wants to know how often they should feed their snake - but it isn't quite that simple. GTP's go through different phases every year and over their lifetime and you need to adjust your feeding accordingly. Different animals want different amounts of food - observing your creature carefully will be your best guide here.

Most people overfeed their animal and that makes for a fat Green Tree Python. Fat critters don't breed. Fat critters aren't healthy. You should be able to see some shape to your animal, remember that they will often eat as much as you give them no matter how much you give them, they'll seem to beg for food - they can be worse than dogs. We understand to say the least but try to not give in to their pleas as best you can.

Neonate Green Tree Pythons are the most complex feeders I have ever worked with. (In the last 20+ years we have bred more than 100 species of reptiles and produced more than 10,000 baby animals). Never buy an animal that isn't fully established or you'll be in for a rough ride. You can read about management of neonates over on our neonate care page.

Once an animal is out of the baby phase it is typically fed once every 7-10 days or so. These are yearling to three year old type animals and they weigh as little as 75 grams and as much as 750 grams. They eat small or medium adult mice, about 35-40 of them per year. Some folks won't feed more than twice without a stool - not a practice we follow closely but not a bad idea either.

Adults are animals that have reached sexual maturity - about four years old and 1,000 grams+ for females and more like three years old and 750 grams+ for males - and they should be fed about once every two weeks. It varies based upon the animals weight of course but typically one or two large adult mice are fed, about 25-30 times per year.

A quick word about "power feeding". Sometimes you see folks discussing or even advertising animals for sale that are "hammering mice every 3 days". They are under the mistaken impression that this is a good thing. This technique is adopted from other snakes and while a bit dubious it is fair to say that (especially in colubrids) it is possible to bring animals to sexual maturity more quickly in a safe and humane manner by dramatically increasing food intake. Not true with Green Tree Pythons. Even if you ignore the serious and to our mind obvious health issues you can't ignore the fact that this just plain old doesn't work on a Green Tree Python. You can get them fatter but you can't make them breed faster, in fact overfed in their youth animals typically have a dramatically shortened productive adult breeding life. You should expect it to be a minimum of five years from when you acquire a juvenile animal to when you'll be able to breed it.

It's All About Training

Lots of folks say that GTP's are tricky feeders and they do have a reputation for problems. Our opinion is that the truth of the matter is that you actually train them over time to eat the right thing and to eat well. Many people have no idea that GTP's are learning as youngsters and they just feed them any old way they can. They enforce bad habits and reward naught behavior, they make problems for folks later.

No one really knows what the typical "natural" prey items would be a for a neonate Green Tree Python in the wild. It is sort of interesting to note that no one has ever observed a female on eggs (that Ranger Rick photo is well staged but actually from a zoo) but we do know some things. We know that despite what every stinkin encyclopedia says GTP's don't really eat birds. (thanks Switak). We know that it has been suggested they may eat bugs and some neonates in captivity have been fed crickets and such. Some folks have produced picutres of babies eating bugs. We know that there are a wide variety of small mammals in the "rodent" type group that inhabit the same ecosystem and that Green Tree Pythons can and do eat them over their lifetimes.

The most important thing we know is that no wild Green Tree Python has ever encountered a pinky white mouse that was raised in a lab bucket. When they are born we have to teach them that this is food, that it tastes good and is good for them. Out of the egg all babies are started on live pinks which is a complex process. We discuss it on our neonate care page. GTP's need to be kept on a strict regimen as young ones before they'll turn into lifelong reliable easy feeders. Allowed a single refusal, assist fed or back to live until the transition can be made again, moved to camp if they refuse three times (camp gets fed in the late afternoon and when we anticipate 30-60 minutes to feed each animal), tennis balled if not voluntary in camp - the list goes on and on.

By the time a Green Tree Python goes up for sale at Spruce Nubble Farm we have trained it to be a lifelong reliably easy feeder. This process can take as little as three but as many as eighteen months. We teach them that daytime is playtime and nighttime is feeding time. Many people are amazed by our unheard of one year health guarantee - this training is a critical component of us being able to sell animals in this way.