Feeding snakes with a restraint tube.

[pennfisherman]

Does anyone have any experience and/or success with feeding snakes through a restraint tube? The concept basically involves putting your snake into a tube with a diameter just small enough to not allow the snake to turn around. On the other end of the tube, you insert a pinky, mouse, rat, etc... and the snake is supposed to eat its way out of the tube. I have a baby hognose snake that will not eat and has lost more than 50% of its body weight; he now weighs about 7.7 grams. I've been thinking about trying this method instead of assist or force feeding. Incase anyone is wonder, I have already exhausted all the other trick and methods of enticing feeding and it is now being tube fed weekly by my vet.

[reptiledude987]

Sounds like it will just put undue stress on the animal. The only use I've heard for those tubes is for immunizing wild caught hots never for feeding.

[Aaron_S]

It's not something I have ever heard of someone doing. As stated, most tubing is done with venomous snakes.

Usually pink pumps are used in cases like yours. However, I'm curious, did you offer frogs to your snake?