Malnourished ball: Frost

A friend of mine recently received a ball python from a friend of his that seems to be badly malnourished. the back story of the snake that was given to me is that she is estimated to be around 5 years old. she was kept in a rather small enclosure, not sure of type, and was only being fed two small mice at a time once a month. our friend brought her with him when he moved in with us. we have 3 healthy normal balls ranging from 3 to 7 months old and i could tell just by looking at her that she was not healthy. we have had her here for 4 weeks and she has eaten one small rat, just out of hopper stage, the first week. two weeks later she ate another, slightly larger but not too large for her to eat. 3 days after eating the rat she bloated up really big around where the rat was being digested and regurgitated the rat. we decided to move down to a hopper for her next feeding, but refused to eat it. she is used to eating mice, and she eats live, not f/t. maybe she is refusing to eat the rats because she's used to mice? she has deficated and it is being saved to be tested for parasites. (one of the 3 regulars we have was housed with her and he seems to be doing fine with eating and behavior.) she doesn't move around much when brought out of the cage. she just sits there, not much tongue flicking either. temps and humidity are fine. i'm pretty sure i've covered everything. here are some pics of her.

http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_052.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_053.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_054.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_055.jpg
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/file...n_2012_056.jpg


i know this snake should probably see a vet, but i was wondering, if just malnourished, how we can coax her to eat. if she is used to only eating mice, should we only feed once a week and then see if she'll move on to rats? i am very unexperienced with sick snakes, as the three we have are very healthy.

I dont know what to tell you but that is the skinniest snake ive ever seen :( Good luck with her and im glad she is now in good hands.

You don't want to move her up in size of prey too quickly. Her body / organs might be damaged from the malnourishment. Keep it small, and once a week should be ok as long as she keeps it down. She is VERY thin, scary thin. I'm not sure what a vet could do for you honestly, in comparison to added stress from the visit. Try not to handle her except for necessary handling. Cleaning the cage, weighing etc. I would probably suggest keeping a close eye on her weight, maybe once a week or once every two weeks. I don't have any first hand experience with nursing snakes back from malnourishment, but those are the tips I've seen thus far. Hopefully someone with more hands-on knowledge will chime in.

Mice should be fine if she will readily accept them.

That poor baby :(

thank you for the advice. i will switch her back to mice and try to feed her again on thursday. think we'll save the vet trip for when she starts to perk up. we currently do not have a scale, do you have any recomendations on a good scale? would a kitchen food scale work fine?

Yeah a digital gram scale from walmart or the like.
Good luck with her, poor thing :(

OMG that is the worst case f malnutrition i have ever seen.

Poor thing :( Are you quarantining her away from your three established ball pythons or are you keeping them all together?

A Kitchen scale that does grams is perfect. I got mine at wal-mart for around $20. Also, a "Tare" feature is a great feature. Turn on scale, put bowl on scale, hit "tare" (It zero's it out) and then put snake in bowl. You'll get the actual weight of the snake without having to weigh the bowl, then the snake, and subtract the difference etc. (I'm lazy) hehe. Good luck! Keep us posted!

She is in her own enclosure. We are sure to wash our hands very well after handling her. The one that was being housed with her was separated from her and kept alone until a couple of days ago and i moved him in with my female (i was told males get territorial with each other?) when i was sure that he was happy and healthy.

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i'm totally for going with the easy road, lol. i'll have to check out the kitchen scales tonight when i head to walmart. i'll definitely keep updating. i wouldn't post a dire situation and just leave you all hanging.

Quarantine should be practiced for a minimum of 90 days when bringing new snakes in, especially if there are any signs of health problems. You really shouldn't be housing any snakes together unless you're intentionally trying to breed. I would strongly suggest getting separate enclosures for each snake and keep the new one as far away from your established collection as possible, although since you said you already housed them together your quarantine is shot anyway. I'd separate them all at this point and consider this day 1 of quarantine on ALL of your snakes, not just the new ones. No telling what you could have introduced to your collection by putting them together...