Trouble Feeding

[Renigaed]

Hi guys, I've got a couple questions that I would like some advice on.

I got my Ball last February from Petsmart (I know, not a very reliable place), and I was told he was five months old. At the time I got him he was 81g which was how much a hatchling should weigh. They also couldn't provide me with a feeding sheet, so either they were starving him, or he was younger than I was told. Since then I've been having a hard time getting him to gain weight, and at this point he's only a little over 300g. Lately he's been refusing the F/T I've been offering him. Everything in his viv is perfect, so I figure the only reason for him to stop eating is because it's winter.

However, him not eating was making me very nervous since he is so small, so I tried giving him a live rat. It was a small hopper, so nothing large enough to hurt him. He took it very happily and ate it. Right now though, this is still too small for him. A large hopper rat would be ideal, but when I was watching him try to eat the rat, he was too timid, and whenever the rat would get near him or touch him, he'd shy away. And then the large hopper tried to bite him so I took it out and returned it.

What I'm really worried about is that he seems too gentle to be able to eat the proper sized rat. I have tried putting him back on F/T but he still doesn't want to eat it. Do you guys have any advice on how I should handle this?

[Panic2336]

What I do with my trouble eaters is this ... I first lure the snake with the live rat then when she's all fired up ready to strike the rat I kill the rat and she strikes a freshly killed rat no harm to the snake

[Renigaed]

How do you kill it? I had to kill the last one but he still didn't eat it
I saw a video where you pop the head off the spinal cord but we just strangled it with a pair of pliers..

[ballpythonsrock2]

Hi guys, I've got a couple questions that I would like some advice on.

I got my Ball last February from Petsmart (I know, not a very reliable place), and I was told he was five months old. At the time I got him he was 81g which was how much a hatchling should weigh. They also couldn't provide me with a feeding sheet, so either they were starving him, or he was younger than I was told. Since then I've been having a hard time getting him to gain weight, and at this point he's only a little over 300g. Lately he's been refusing the F/T I've been offering him. Everything in his viv is perfect, so I figure the only reason for him to stop eating is because it's winter.

However, him not eating was making me very nervous since he is so small, so I tried giving him a live rat. It was a small hopper, so nothing large enough to hurt him. He took it very happily and ate it. Right now though, this is still too small for him. A large hopper rat would be ideal, but when I was watching him try to eat the rat, he was too timid, and whenever the rat would get near him or touch him, he'd shy away. And then the large hopper tried to bite him so I took it out and returned it.

What I'm really worried about is that he seems too gentle to be able to eat the proper sized rat. I have tried putting him back on F/T but he still doesn't want to eat it. Do you guys have any advice on how I should handle this?

I once owned a BP(1000 plus grams0 that this behavior reminds me of. It wouldn't hardly eat F/T no matter what the trick I seemed to try. It wanted (loved) live but it was afraid of most rats. It would immediately strike and eat live mice, absolutely loved live mice, or rats that where the size of a huge mouse. But it being a female I knew that the only way to reasonably money wise do this was to raise my own mice. There wasn't a supply of live really small rats. I tried breeding my own mice, but decided raising live mice just wasn't for me. That is why I sold the snake, mice and all. The person I sold it too was told what they were up against. I now have one who easily eats F/T small rats which works out a lot better for me. So this might be what you end up having to do, that is (doing live mice.) Sincerely I wish you all the luck. You can keep trying F/T it might work for you one day but sometimes they just refuse IMO to convert to F/T or fresh killed. This one might have to have live mice or sometime down the road very small live rats.

[Ogre]

I generally have issues like that this time of the year, I typically just get a live mouse after week 3 if refusal and hope. But if that doesn't work I just make sure that the temps are good and that my boy isn't losing to much weight and hope he eats eventually. Just keep the live mouse around living in an old ten gallon terrarium I have laying around. If that isn't available and you can always just return your fuzzy then do that. It took my BP a long time to readily accepted f/t just keep on it and it will take to it.