How much can he lose?

[Gerardo]

My normal male is a very good eater. He never turns down food. But ive heard that around 1,000 gram they usually stop eating. I want to know how much weight can he lose without it being a problem? Today he weighed in at 890 grams.

[angllady2]

Well, the dreaded "1000 gram wall" does happen to a lot of ball pythons. It seems to affect females more than males, but I've often thought that was simply because when you are waiting impatiently for a female to hit that magic 1500 gram mark and she stops eating around 1000 grams, people tend to complain about it more.

Now, as to your snake. he may or may not stop eating at 1000 grams. Generally speaking, males tend to go off food in the winter time, because that roughly translates to breeding season, and like most guys at a certain stage in life, there are more important things to think about than food. Like how many hot girls he can convince he's a stud.

My advice to you is just to keep feeding him like normal. Don't worry about him going off food, because he can pick up on your stress and you can actually cause him to stop eating.

if and when he does stop on his own. Just be patient and wait him out. If he normally feeds once a week and he begins to refuse, then back off to offering every two weeks. A non feeding ball python is usually much harder on the owner than on the snake. I've only ever heard of hatchlings who actually died from refusing to eat, not a mature snake. Eventually there will come a time when he goes off food for one reason or another. The key is not to panic about it. A healthy male at 1000 grams can go 5 or 6 months without eating with no ill effects. And a mature female in the range of 2500 grams plus can go a year.

So try not to fret too much about it. It's really not as big of a deal as most people think. I've got a 3600 gram female who hasn't eaten for 7 months now, and she hasn't lost any weight yet.

Gale