How often do Ball Pythons go on hunger strike?

[Dutti]

Since the begining of this year, my 4 year old male BP is not moving and on hunger strike. Everything is ok and i have no worries at all. I,m just wondering how often do they do this? every 6 months, every year, every 2 years or more? Its his first hunger strike ever. I,m trying to know when shall i expect the next one.

[Mr Kipling]

As a note, I have a female Super Fire who last fed 23rd Sept. 2016 and nothing, and I mean nothing, live rats, multies chicks, would indcuce her to feed, then last week she decided, with no preamble, to take a live multie then three days later a DF one, go figure, bloody snakes lol!

[Cybred]

My python also refuses to eat since 4 months, lost 100 gr already. It was 1011gr and now stands at 918gr. We will try out if environment change triggers out the feeding response. If not I will try the assist feed method. last resort we will go to a vet.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

There is no schedule they can go of feed for various reason, stress, health issue, breeding, low barometric pressure, over feeding, and of course some will not fast or fast a lot less.

It happens and if you want to have an animal that eats with more consistency the first step is to feed smaller prey items and skit feeding every now and then. A male does not need anything bigger than a 80 grams rat every 7 to 10 days even to the largest male.

[Yzmasmom]

Our adult fed last on Dec 25th, 2016. Still not eating. Our 9 month old has fasted the last 3 weeks. I only offer once a month for the adult until she starts eating again or we waste rats. The 9 month old I'm offering every other week until she starts eating again. We used to feed mediums to the adult but are switching to smalls to tryou and avoid fasts.
The adult has only lost 183g and the 9 month old is weighing 532g (can't remember what she was pre fast, but she hasn't lost much.)

[Sunnieskys]

Dec 25th? OMG i would asst feed. That is soooo long i would be freaking out!!!

[Dutti]

There is no schedule they can go of feed for various reason, stress, health issue, breeding, low barometric pressure, over feeding, and of course some will not fast or fast a lot less.

It happens and if you want to have an animal that eats with more consistency the first step is to feed smaller prey items and skit feeding every now and then. A male does not need anything bigger than a 80 grams rat every 7 to 10 days even to the largest male.

I can remeber before mine went into hunger strike, he was hungry like crazy. He ate like 4 adult mice and 3 small rats within 2 weeks and was still hungry until i brought him a large(not X-large) rat. He ate it on January the 3rd and went on hunger strike until now. I guess he was storing the food in his body. I didn,t know that at that time. In the future he will be getting a small rat every week and that is it.

[Oxylepy]

My experience:

Snake puberty, as I call it, occurs around 1000g, they tend to go off eating for a while and then go back to it.

Breeding season: A lot of males stop eating, my own female stops for a loooong time (december through as late as august)

Random: Other reasons such as stress, temperature, being well fed, etc will just randomly cause ball pythons to stop eating at any given time.

[redshepherd]

I found that for one of my adult males who loves to go on 2~3 month hunger strikes before, if I only offer sporadically once every 2~4 weeks, he eats every time.

Dec 25th? OMG i would asst feed. That is soooo long i would be freaking out!!!

It's long, but not worrisome for a 4 year old adult. There's no need to assist feed full-grown ball pythons ever, unless they have lost significant weight.

[Oxylepy]

Redshepherd brings up a fair point: Sporadic feeding can actually help. I tend to never feed my snakes on a schedule other than to feed growing ball pythons about 80-120% their body weight every 2 months, and adults are kept around certain weights by feeding every couple weeks to as much as every month, depending on the size of the meal and the size of the snake.

My adult female which stops eating is offered food at least monthly until she eats again, then I treat her as a growing snake until she goes off food again, usually puts on 600-1000g before going on a feeding strike again.