Oh, SCARY! Feeder issue

[purplemuffin]

Yikess... So, we are still having issues keeping Maru on f/t rats, there are times when really she will go off food for months and months before we just give in and give her live. She originally had scars from live feeders before, so that's why we try to avoid them. But we've been lazy about it lately and just been giving her live(while monitoring her and getting ready to intervene if there was ever a problem!) We'll start giving her some 'tough love' again soon, I think.

But uh, we had an interesting experience! Bought a small rat from our local exotic pet store. They don't breed their own, and they had just gotten a new shipment in that day. This rat was just like any other rat we had gotten, except it was the first rat we had seen with a black head and white body.

The only reason I mention this is because Maru was absolutely TERRIFIED of the rat! She hissed and hissed at it and musked all over the very confused rodent! She struck once but would not coil. Now both animals were terrified and trying to escape each other. Nathan took Maru out and put her back in her tank. Dropped some rodent food in with the rat and some water and decided to wait to try again later.

It was like three or four days later, decided to try again as she was relaxed and comfortable but was acting very hungry. Took her out, and went to put her in the feeding tub.. Before we had put her in, she panicked and coiled tightly around Nathan's wrist, hissing down at the rat. At this point we are like..Ok, something is UP.

We check maru for injuries, seeing if somehow the rat bit her or something..Nope, no problems, no scratches, no bites.. When she's away from the rodent she calms down and goes back to normal(though a bit jumpy) So we put her back in her tank and let her hide and calm down.

Well, that was yesterday and this morning we found the rat dead. I don't know if he was sick or something.. He had water, food, bedding, he didn't freeze or overheat. It really makes me nervous actually. I don't know if the pet store got a 'bad batch' of rodents or something...


Does anyone have any idea WHY Maru was so violently against eating this rat? Could there have been signs that it was sick that made her nervous? Could it have just been the different colored head? She is prone to being a picky eater. Could the rat's death have been some strange fluke, maybe bad rodent food or something? Either way, we have THOROUGHLY cleaned the feeding tub, gave maru a soak, cleaned her cage, and anything that came in contact with it. I don't know what happened, but I'd like to take as few risks as possible.. Yuck!! What do you guys think about this??

[llovelace]

have one that will only take white rats, if she is that picky of n eater stick with what works and save yourself alot of headaches. As far as the rat dying, there could be several reasons, when your snake struck, he could have pierced an organ etc.

[shelliebear]

I've heard of BP's having color preferences, but never experienced it.
I've also heard that they can be mentally scarred after a bad live feeding experience, and won't eat live again for quite a while.
Not sure which one it could be. :p

[shorty54]

Not sure on this one. But, my lesser will kill any mouse. But, only eat white ones. She's killed a black and brown then just left them.....

[blushingball419]

Hmm, I've actually had a similar experience back when I was living with my ex. He's the one who got me into snakes, and he had this male pastel bp that was a voracious eater but he was usually fed live rats. Well, one day we brought this medium rat home from the local pet store (again, like you said, they had just received this shipment) and threw it in the feeding container with the snake. Of course, being the garbage disposal that he was, the pastel struck and coiled... but as the rat was dying it... well... had some really nasty diarrhea The pastel did hold on and wait til the rat was completely dead, but then immediately uncoiled and couldn't get away from it fast enough. I mean, I've never seen a snake actually sprint away from something, but man he was up and over the side of the feeding container in a second, hissing and very agitated. And then none of our other bps wanted anything to do with it either so we had to throw it away.

Now maybe it had something to do with the fact that this nasty wet stuff was suddenly all over him, but I also think they can sense when there is something wrong with the rodent and it just wouldn't be good to eat. So that could definitely be what happened with your bp too. I mean, your rat could have just died from shock or something related, but I'd say it sounds like there was something wrong with it. And yes, sometimes it does seem like bps get used to a certain color, so if you've never fed a hooded rat before she could have been scared of it. Maybe a hooded rat is the type that gave her the scars. Who knows?? At least now you know to try and avoid hooded rats

[SlitherinSisters]

If your snake will eat live, but not f/t then why even bother. There's no sense in letting your snake go months and months without eating if it will eat live just to try and switch over to f/t. Some snakes just won't do it. The first thing I would say is, don't feed in another tank/tub. Feed in the enclosure it lives in, moving them just causes more stress. When she is 'freaking out' that's most likely because she's in feeding mode. They are really twitchy, excited, etc when food is introduced, it's a natural response. If she strikes, she'll eat it, she just needs some space. In my experience BPs never strike at food just for fun or defensively, if they strike and you give them space/time they will eat it. I've also never had a BP prefer one color over another and I'm not sure I really believe that they would care. I was under the impression that they have terrible eyesight and judge by heat signatures, smell, movement....

[angllady2]

Well, I know for a fact BP's will strike at prey in defense and not to eat it, I've seen it not once but numerous times from my het pied female.

She used to be a garbage disposal, then at around 800 grams, she quit eating. I knew that was normal, so I wasn't too worried. After 5 weeks of steady F/T refusals, I offered her a small live rat, which she happily ate. So I figured problem solved, I don't care much what they eat as long as they eat.

Two weeks in a row she took her live rat no problems. Then she had another feeding strike. Live didn't interest her, neither did F/T. We alternated between offering F/T and live each week. Four weeks into her feeding strike, when we offered the live rat, she would strike it, throw it away from herself, and then recoil and hiss. The rat would stay still for a while, as if to figure out what happened. As soon as it moved, she did it again, strike, throw, recoil and hiss. After the fifth time she did this we removed the damaged rat and fed it to someone else.

The following week we offered F/T which she ignored. The week after that, I decided to try going smaller and offered a live mouse. This pleased her and she ate it very quickly. I offered her a second, but she didn't want it. Next feeding day, I again offered her a live mouse, when she repeated her previous behavior. Strike, throw, recoil and hiss. Strike, throw, recoil and hiss. After four times her doing this, we removed the mouse and fed it to someone else. That was 2 months ago. She has taken a single live mouse in that time, and has thrown prey on four other occasions.

Her temps are spot on, she has her tight hides and water bowl, she has no mites and show no sign of illness. She's not loosing much weight as of yet. So we just keep waiting and trying. But I can tell you without a doubt she's reacting in fear to those rodents, and if you left it in there until her violent throwing killed it, she still wouldn't eat it.

To the OP, it may be that her striking did internal damage to the rat and that is why it died. But I know I've heard from many people about their snakes refusing to eat a certain color of rodent.

Gale

[purplemuffin]

This is actually the first reptile forum I've ever been a part of that ever said that it was okay to feed live. Perhaps my main forum has many very extreme people, but they prefer to not take chances like that. It's always a bit scary. I've seen some very badly damaged snakes from food that fought back! Always been told it is safer to give them tough love as long as they aren't losing weight(and she never lost a gram!) But this is also my first ball python specific forum as well, so I know that makes a difference.

We used to use the feeding tub because she had substrate that we were told could easily get ingested, and we did not want to take that risk. We've since been researching more and have begun making the switch to newspaper in all the reptiles, and feeding within the enclosure.

Her coiling was very different than being in feeding mode. She was trying to get as far from the rat as possible, hissing very loudly as she did so! This was the first time we had heard a hiss from her since the day we brought her home years ago.


It's hard to figure out what is right sometimes. I'm still learning, and I know I will continue to learn as long as I keep reptiles. Every year I watch whole groups of people completely switch their views on a piece of reptile care. I try as hard as I can to do what is right for my animals. I was told that f/t was the safest way to go, I was told that all snakes will switch over.. So I went by that. When we got nervous that she may never choose to go over, we went back to feeding live. But it is frustrating when I do feed live and have an issue like this.

[angllady2]

I understand your fustration and confusion. I've had some pretty big struggles myself.

The whole live vs. f/t thing seems to come down to either violently opposed or completely fine with it. There isn't much middle ground that I've seen.

As much for convenience as anything else I started all mine on f/t. Things went well for a long time, and I was satisfied. Then I acquired an older snake who had always been fed live, he's got the scars to prove it. So after several months of attempting to change him, I decided it wasn't worth the stress to us both nor the wasted food and let him have live. Over time, I acquired other snakes, ones I had changed habits, so now I feed about half and half.

I will say, as best I can tell the majority of injuries come about from unsupervised feedings. Yes there are exceptions, but for the most part if you supervise live feedings you stand a good chance of being able to intervene and prevent injury.
That being said, I desperately wish all mine took f/t. I don't like feeding live. I know no matter how careful I am, there is always risk involved with feeding live. I also know that people who claim ALL snakes will eventually take f/t are mistaken. There are plenty of people on here who will tell you the decision to feed live over f/t was a long, drawn out battle and in some cases the snakes life depended on the switch.

I also feel your pain in this particular situation. As I said before, I've seen very similar behavior in one of mine. This female should easily be 1200 grams plus, but her continued feeding strikes and refusals have kept her at just under 900 grams for the last 6 months. And even when I asked for advise her on her specific problems, no two people told me the same thing, making it difficult to find a solution, or even help her problem.

My only suggestion to you is to give her some time to relax and recover her equilibrium, try not moving her for feeding if you can, and obviously don't offer her that same rat again. As difficult as it may be, try to move past this. I've read somewhere that snakes can pick up on our moods, so maybe if she senses you are stressed out wondering if she's going to do this again, that stresses her out ? Unfortunately I don't know how to help you out, since I'm still fighting the same problem as you, just for a lot longer, and I have no clue how to make it go away.

Gale

[shaunwithbite]

I'm in indonesia where they don't have frozen rats available .. All my python eat live .. And I do sometimes notice they actully get excited when I gave they a different colour rat ... I have read somewhere that the rats with patterns/colours resembles the African soft fur rats .. Where is actually their /Bpythons main food in Africa ..

But of course.. I think all python have their own attitudes , we just have to figure it out