Establishing Neonate Green Tree Pythons

By David Brahms

So you have recently purchased your first baby Green Tree Python and are having a difficult time getting the new acquisition to eat.  This is not too uncommon, and the intent of this write-up is to guide/help new keepers in a direction that will make them and the animals happy for years and even decades after the purchase. Most of the info in this article is an accumulation/conglomeration of tactics and tools shared across numerous forums and social media and assembled here for easy reference.  It is not meant to lay claim to any of this info but rather share things that have actually worked for myself and many others.

Typically, the most troublesome purchases were done at a reptile show or a pet store. 99% of the time the animals being offered in these places are fresh imported babies. Sometimes they were bred and hatched at a farm in Indonesia, but they could also have been taken from the wild. Their prices are low for a reason…..usually nobody has put the time into getting them properly established.  While these animals look like a great deal because of the lower prices (compared to true United States Captive Bred and Born babies) they do come with hidden costs that you may or may not be prepared for.  Sometimes these reptile-show GTP’s can be plug and play but often you will struggle getting them going.  Hopefully this article will help you avoid common mistakes and expose you to bits of information that experienced GTP keepers have been deploying successfully for years and even decades.

Best case scenario, and most recommended to start off with a good fighting chance is to purchase a well-established baby from a reputable breeder, or from someone who works with imports and actually gets them established before selling.  To further define “established” the neonate GTP should have been feeding for the breeder without hesitation over numerous meals.  How many feedings you ask?  Well….it is good practice to get between 15 to 20 meals in the neonate without issue before selling. If this neonate is being sold to an inexperienced keeper it should be taking food aggressively using sight and smell. Meaning all the animal needs is to see and smell the prey before they grab and eat it. Some animals take longer to achieve this aggressive feeding response and will require tapping of their tail and/or the side of the neck to elicit a strike and grab. These animals can be very frustrating to new keepers who have not yet developed the subtle techniques to get these animals to eat readily.  There is a learned skill here and it is very difficult to describe in words. It is honed in when you have produced your first clutches and have to get a whole clutch to eat. If this is your first animal and you have never dealt with this before you should be asking the breeder to make sure the one you want is eating by sight and smell and not by teasing.

Before the new animal arrives, you should have your husbandry parameters on point! It is good practice to mimic the breeder’s husbandry as closely as possible to allow the new animal to feel as comfortable as possible when it arrives at your home. If they kept it in a rack and 6 qt tub before sending it to you, you should try and do the exact same thing when it arrives at your house. Mimic the temps they were using, mimic the watering/spraying schedule, mimic the time of day the breeder was feeding, mimic as much as you can! This won’t be a guarantee of a successful transition but it will only help by eliminating potential problems right at the start. 

It is not uncommon for babies to revert back a little during the shipping process even when you get them from a very reputable breeder. Meaning they can go from aggressive sight/smell feeding to needing a little teasing. If you are struggling with a little tease feeding you should feel comfortable communicating with the breeder and they should be willing to help you with developing some technique. You should always communicate with the breeder first before going out onto Facebook or other social media asking for help and advice. Social media is full of people whose intentions are good and want to help but often have zero experience actually dealing with tricky feeders. The breeder raised this animal from the ground up and actually had it feeding aggressively before selling it to you. Therefore, this person knows exactly what it took to get this animal established and is the BEST resource for help.

It is important for breeders to provide after sale service for people who purchase their animals.  If the new keeper is having issues they should be able to communicate with the breeder to help them get on track again. The breeder is the best person equipped to teach them the subtle teasing and scenting techniques used to get the animal established in the beginning. It is also not uncommon for breeders to offer to take the animal back to get them established again if the new keeper just doesn’t have the needed skills. Through good communication you may find that the new keeper is just not ready to take on a baby GTP and a refund could be issued. These are things that should be talked about up front before the animal is shipped so both parties do not get aggravated by the process.  The more things agreed upon early in the transaction, the less surprises can pop up.

Ok….so you didn’t buy a baby GTP from a good, reputable breeder as described above. Now what?  Hopefully you did lots of research in advance and have everything set up using tried and true methods.  Your goal is to get this animal comfortable, eating, and drinking on a regular schedule. Your goal at this point should not be to set up the animal in a bio-active or naturalistic enclosure. Doing so might seem like the best thing for the baby to feel comfortable but in reality it creates a scenario where things can get out of control very rapidly.  When dealing with baby green tree pythons you will have a very narrow margin for error and if your husbandry slips the end result will be an animal that is stressed and will struggle to become well established for you.  You want to keep things simple. Meaning keep the baby enclosure as simple and manageable as possible while it becomes well established for you. What has proven to work for decades is the following:

• Use a 6 qt shoebox tub, a perch, deli cup for water, and you can use paper towel for substrate or bare bottom. This is recommended for young animals for several reasons.  Generally baby green tree pythons will act like they are more secure in a small enclosure vs a large setup. But more importantly the size of the water dish in relation to the enclosure will be large. This will help ensure that they will access the water when they cruise at night, and the high surface area will facilitate evaporation and keep the shoebox humid.

• Ideally this enclosure will be in a regular snake rack where temps and humidity can be easily controlled or if you have a heated room that will work as well.
• The location of the enclosure should be in a quiet and stable part of the home.  You want to reduce foot traffic passing by the enclosure, and also keep nosy pets like cats from pestering the new acquisition.  

• I prefer to keep all of my neonates at 82-83F.  Mine are kept in ambient room heat without a temperature gradient. But if you are using a rack setup and do not use ambient heat you will still want to target that temp range.

• Provide fresh cool water as often as possible. Daily, or every couple days is good.  Obviously change the water whenever it is soiled. Proper hydration is critical with baby GTP’s and you should give extra attention to this daily. Do not keep the water dish over or directly under the heat source. They are attracted to cool fresh water and having it heated up by your heat source will be the opposite of what they will be looking for.

• Clean the enclosure whenever it is soiled by the animal. Baby GTP’s will defecate often and you will need to clean the enclosure and perches accordingly.

• Don’t mess with the animal. Meaning don’t hold it, caress it, show it off to friends, continuously take pictures for social media etc. This is a delicate animal that is easily stressed because at this stage it is food for pretty much everything else in the forest.  Remember your goal at this point is to get this baby established and healthy, not to show off to people, or hold it for your enjoyment.

• Don’t try to circumvent what has been described above. Seriously. This is a ticket for increased chances of success. If it isn’t broken don’t try to fix it. Particularly if you are coming from zero experience with this specific species.

Now that you have the baby GTP properly set up and settled in you are going to see if you can get it feeding. There are no methods that are 100% effective. Just like people, baby GTP’s can have different personalities and characteristics. Some will be aggressive hunters and strike at anything that moves in front of their face, others will be shy, others will be scared and run.  Because this is the way things are you might need to experiment before you find a combination that works for you and the new acquisition.

Below is a list of techniques and methods that have proven successful for many:

• First you must have Patience…..Patience….Patience!  Be persistent in your attempts but also recognize that sometimes you need to walk away and try again later that day or the next day.
• Second, and actually more important is stability. Having a stable environment at the start will help you when trying to get animals to feed. If an animal is stressed it will most likely not be interested in eating. Setting up as described previously will help in this department.

• Have the prey item warmed up before presenting it to the GTP. If it is cold the GTP may not be interested.  Keeping in warm water is a good way to keep the pinkies ready for feeding attempts.  

• Use a good pair of long tweezers or tongs to offer the prey. You want the baby GTP to focus on the prey and not your warm fingers. You also want to use something that allows you to instantly release the prey once the baby GTP grabs it.  

• Present the prey with the nose facing the snake. Holding the prey up by the shoulders or mid body works well vs. holding the rump and having it flop around.

• Use the smallest prey you have to start. Sometimes the baby GTP will strike, wrap and drop the prey item if it feels too heavy and bulky for them. Sometimes you can offer a second pinky to the snake while it is still holding the first pinky in its coils but has lost interest in eating it.

• If the GTP doesn’t take the prey immediately after being presented, try tapping the tail of the baby GTP with the prey. Also try tapping the neck of the baby GTP about ½” to an inch behind the head.  You may need to do this several times before the GTP strikes and holds. Rotate around….tap the tail…then tap the neck…and tail again.  Switching things up will often get the baby GTP to get excited and strike. Sometimes you will need to walk away and try again after 10 minutes or an hour have passed. Just make sure you rewarm the prey before offering again.

• After tapping try moving the prey in front of the nose of the baby GTP with jerky quick movements. Sometimes this will elicit a strike as well.

• Try scenting the prey with day-old-chick down. This scenting method is the most successful (again, not a guarantee) and used by many breeders to get babies to accept their first meals. Simply pluck some down from the chick and apply to the head/nose of the pinky and present it to the baby GTP as described above. A little water on the head/nose of the prey will cause the down to stick.  There are other things people have used to scent prey but the chick down is hands down the most successful.  I’ve never heard anyone be successful using tuna juice, “braining” the pinky, lizard scent, frog scent etc. For whatever reason, chick down works more than most everything else.

• Try offering food at different times of the day. Sometimes feeding in the morning may prove to be successful vs. only trying when the lights have been out for a while. Baby GTP’s have been observed to live in areas of broken canopy in the forest feeding on diurnal lizards. So daytime feeding is not necessarily unnatural for them.

• Once the snake has grabbed the prey and wrapped it in its coils you will want to move away without alarming the baby GTP and leave it alone. Sometimes the baby GTP will take what seems like forever before it actually eats the pinky. It is a good idea to close the enclosure as soon as the snake has grabbed the prey and walk away and out of the room until it has had a chance to eat in peace.  Sometimes they can get distracted by unnecessary movement in the room and forget that they were about to eat something.

So at this point you have done everything by the book as outlined above and the baby GTP will not eat.  Here are a few last things you can do to try to get it going:

• If you know someone who has lots of experience with tricky baby GTP feeders you can ask if they would be willing to take it into their care for you, or come over and teach you some methods. This is a lot to ask of someone and should only be done with people who would be willing to help. Meaning don’t go asking random people online, ideally this should be a friend.

• Sometimes the ordeal of being shipped or even traveling in a car for a while will cause a switch to be flipped in the baby GTP and they will start eating. There are numerous experienced breeders who have shipped troubled babies to friends and that baby would begin feeding at the new destination immediately.

• If you do not have access to help and you tried everything above and the animal has not eaten for weeks you can assist feed. This is not the same as force feeding. Instead of shoving food down a snake’s throat you will insert the food item to the back of the mouth. Baby GTP’s will often bite down on these things and get their teeth lodged in them. They will try to spit them out but because they cannot eject the food item they will just eat it on their own.

• Sometimes using a pinky head will work if the animal you are working with likes to strike but not hold onto the prey.  Take a frozen pinky and remove the head with a razor blade and then thaw it.  A pinky head will often get lodged in the back of the mouth when the animal strikes and they will not be able to spit it out. They will just inevitably give up and just eat it.

• There are two other things to use in assist feeding that are relatively easy to give baby GTP’s to help get their digestive system in gear.  A section of frozen/thawed mouse tail that is ½” to 1” in length cut near the rump of the mouse is easy to insert into the back of the baby GTP mouth. This will require you to gently hold the baby GTP and restrain it long enough to insert the food item to the back of the mouth. The mouse tail will have hairs all pointing in one direction and this can help keep the baby GTP from spitting it out.  They will struggle and try to eject the tail but will eventually just swallow it. You can do this to keep the baby GTP from withering away while you attempt to feed again in the future. You can also cut a hind leg off an adult mouse at the hip (pre-killed of course), remove the skin/fur and again push it to the back of the snake’s mouth.  This is something venomous keepers have done for a long time with their troublesome captives with great success.  The leg/thigh muscle with adult bone provides more nourishment than what a mouse tail could offer.  These are easier for the baby snakes to eject but because they have more nutritional value it is a great alternative.  You may need to do this once a week for a while.  Oftentimes the baby GTP will “switch-on” after doing this for a while and start eating on their own.

As you can see there are no silver bullets or 100% successful methods for you to employ. However, there are many things you can do to increase your chances of success and hopefully this article was able to expose you to them. Good luck!