Morning all,

Just wanting to know on the best ways to feed 2 of our slings, they have burrowed and never seem to ever come out. What is the best way to ensure they eat?

I have been looking around but cant seem to find any info about it.

Thanks

Don't think you need to do anything special here.
Drop a food item in the enclosure, if the T is hungry he'll find it. If the T is not hungry he'll ignore it. If not eaten by the next day just remove the food item and try again in a few days.

I have cork bark hides in most of my enclosures and I used to lift the bark and drop crickets right next to the T. That way I knew almost instantly if the T was gonna eat or not. These days I don't struggle with that just try and keep track of when last they ate.
I only have 20 T's so it's not difficult keeping a mental note of those on hunger strike. That said I should also mention I've only really had two major hunger strikes.... B.klaasi went about 2 months without food before having a molt, B.emillia about 5 weeks (molted 2 days ago :happy: ) and then a G.rosea now going on a month.

As Kudu advised. If the spiders are hungry they will come out and feed on the prey items.

This is what normally happens, pet holes feel the movement above ground.
They also tend to come out at night when you are sleeping.


You can also drop the prey item directly into the spiders burrow, just insures that the spider will eat allot faster.
But never break a closed off entrance to feed your spiders, as the spiders might be molting, which in turn puts the spider at risk.

The other issue with dropping the prey item into the burrow, is sometimes that startles the spider or scares him, in turn he does not catch the prey item right away and they are both stuck in the burrow together.

Here is a video for you to watch.

Not to throw spanners in the works but my one A seemanni sling forgets how to spider.

This has happened twice:
Spider closes up burrow to molt.
Doesn't open burrow up again after and just sits there - where the others have opened up and are feeding.
Over the weeks the abdomen gets ridiculously small, almost disappears, so I bore down, careful not to injure the spider, and drop in a roach which the spider immediately attacks.
Rinse, repeat.

I honestly believe that if I didn't do this it would die.

Agree with Marius.

We have the same issue with our P.muticus - only eats if we force the roaches down the hole. I've had a whole rugby team of roaches running around the top and eventually dying of old age or hunger ....

So gekosin, It comes down the making judgement calls and getting to know your the cycles of your T's ..

Marius wrote: Not to throw spanners in the works but my one A seemanni sling forgets how to spider.
This has happened twice:
Spider closes up burrow to molt.
Doesn't open burrow up again after and just sits there - where the others have opened up and are feeding.

And this is where learning your spiders become part and parcel of the hobby.
Where you knowledge advances from a noob pet hole keeper to a pro pet hole keeper.