How Frequently Do You Feed Your BPs?

I have had my bp since March of 09 and he was a great eater unless he was shedding. But recently he has stopped eating which happens to coincide with it getting cooler here in Pa. I have changed nothing in his routine ie cage temps which are at 92 in the day and 80 at night he is in a 40 gal tank. My question is why has he stopped eating when nothing has changed? Did I do something wrong or is this an internal clock that tells him to hybernate?

What's his weight? How old is he?
The answers to these two questions are necessary before anyone can even begin to speculate. You should probably start a NEW post, not tag your question onto the end of this one.

Hey Robin, Is there someplace that you learned how to start raising your own Rats for feed. Im up to 7 BP's .. not sure if i want to get into that . But i would like to read up on it..

How did you get started doing that? and any errors in doing it?

Scub.

every monday. with the exception of the 3 baby corns, and the teeny tiny hatchling het. pied female. they get fed every 5 days.

I thaw just a few rats every now and then and offer them to all of them starting with the fussiest first. If they get taken by the fussiest feeders then i either thaw a few more to give to the "guarunteed" feeders or wait a few days. I don't really have a feeding schedule as such, i just feed them when they are hungry :D

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Originally Posted by SoCaliSon

To answer the thread question I feed every Friday... and they eat readily.

To put in my two cents about the Live vs. F/T...

I am not going to knock anyones tried and true methods of feeding... It is your choice on how you want to feed the snake. This is only my opinion ... I personally feed Stunned Live. I think the only reason F/T exists is for the conveniece of the human and not for the benefit of the snake. I am going to to split this into a couple key points.

1. Nature designed our snakes to hunt and kill live prey. Snakes are not scavengers. Maybe it happens but I have never heard of a wild snake ingesting something that was dead when they found it. It is one of my snakes primal intinctual behaviors to find that warm little animal... attack, constrict them and swallow them. I personally think it is borderline cruel to keep a captive snake and neglect them of this behavior. When a snake stops contricting before it eats... That is sad, as it is just loosing touch with it's natural behaviors.

This is my Favorite point to make on this issue...
What if we forced you to eat Mushed up food through a straw for the rest of your life because there was a danger of you chipping a tooth on a bone. No more chewing cause it's dangerous... Even though that is what we have our teeth for! Eventually our jaw muscles would turn incredibly weak. Then if we ever wanted to use our teeth again they would be almost useless becasue your jaws muscles are worthless. A snake contricting it's food is like us chewing... It's how they were designed to do it. Don't neglect them of chewing their food!

You are forcing your snake to feed in an unnatural way until that is all he used to. Not Good. It is extremely rare for a snake to take F/T on the first try because snakes are not built to recognize dead things as prey... I hate saying it like this but sadly this is what happens... The owner decides F/T is the more convenient way to go (You can easily feed a freshly killed or stunned mouse to the snake... Why crappy frozen stuff???... Becasue it's convenient for YOU)... Then they start trying to feed F/T and most of the time the only way to get a snake to take it is to let it starve until it decides that it will take the F/T. I know "Starve" sounds bad; But a natural predator is only going to take a dead prey item if it is tricked to think that it is alive, or is starving and takes it as a last resort.

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1st bold marK: Actually, snakes do eat carrion (deceased animals) they find in the wild. According to Chris Mattison's book The New Encyclopedia of Snakes:
"In the past, there was a widely held view that snakes rarely if ever ate carrion."

"Recent observations have changed this view to some extent. There are several reported observations of snakes eating carrion. A large prairie rattlesnake was seen eating a dead cottontail rabbit, for instance. The rabbit had been dead for over one day, as maggots and carrion beetles were present ont he carcass and the snake took one and a half hours to consume the rabbit, due to rigor mortis. Other instances include a cottonmouth, Agkistrodon piscivorus, that ate a dead water snake, Nerodia erythrogaster, and another cottonmouth that was seen to scavenge around the nests of sea birds, searching for spilled fish. Venomous snakes may be more disposed to take dead prey than other snakes because their hunting method involves killing and releasing prey, after which they track it down and eat it some time later. The process of finding such prey may take several hours, by which time the body will be well and truly dead.

"Non-venomous snakes may also take carrion. A specimen of the West Indian ground snake Alsophis portoriciensus richardi from Congo Cay, Puerto Rico, was watched by Norton as it found and ate dehydrated fish dropped by brown pelicans while feeding their chicks. The snake appeared to be actively searching in areas where spilled fish may have become lodged. Yet another example concerns a ribbon snake, Thamnophis sauritus, which was watched as it tried to peel a squashed toad froma tarmac road, while Beford watched an Australian colubrid, the keelback, Tropidonophis mairii, taking road-killed frogs from road surfaces on more than one occasion.

"These casual observations seem to indicate that snakes are not adverse to eating carrion when the opportunity arises. They are, of course, in competition with scavenging birds and mammals and are, by comparison, poorly equipped to find such prey first.

"In captivity, most snakes can be encouraged to eat freshly killed prey animals. Many will also eat food that has been frozen and thawed out and a number seem to prefer food that has been ;eft in their cage for several hours and has become 'high'. Observations on captives snakes should be regarded as suspicious [in terms of wild snake behavior] but, nevertheless, they do demonstrate the flexibility of feeding behaviour."

2nd bold mark: What difference does it make if the snake is not eating in a "natural" way? Do you think glass cages, stackable cages, and plastic tubs filled with aspen, newspaper, paper towels, reptibark or other substrates are considered "natural" to the snake? If we choose to keep and learn about these interesting animals, there is no possible way that we are going to be able to give them a 100% natural environment. We can replicate it to the best of our abilities and will still be way off.

Use whatever works best for you. If that's frozen/thawed, that's fine. If it's live, then watch your snake to be sure you don't have a problem, and that's fine too. But don't factor "natural" into the equation, because there's nothing "natural" about a ball python in captivity.

Just once a week, usually around mon, tues or wed.

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Originally Posted by rabernet

Can you point me to a study that says that live is healthier and more exciting for the snake than f/t? The fact that there are thousands of animals feed f/t that are thriving in collections around the world is proof enough that f/t is no less healthy than feeding live.

I am impressed with my snakes and the fact that they are perfectly designed to dispatch their prey - but if entertainment value is the reason to choose to feed live, the keeper might want to re-think their reason for having a snake.

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7dayz is wut I voted. I agree wit my friend sorry robin but I never saw or read a ball python eating a thawed out rat or mouse in the wild lmao.

I feed my guy every Thursday around 8pm and he's only ever skipped one meal. He's almost 8months now and is already bigger than my brother in laws 3 year old python. However he only feeds twice a month. I try to tell him to move to weekly but what can you do?

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Originally Posted by FireproofGorilla

I feed f/t. The python tends to be less aggressive and it's safer for the snake. She doesn't even constrict, she knows what she's getting and she's greatful for it. F/t is more humane. Feeding live also gives us herps a bad rep with the general public. When the public starts getting scared, they start proposing bans. You really should rethink your purpose for owning a snake if you got it for the entertainment value. A starving dog could eat a cat and get plenty of nutrition that way, but are you going to stop feeding it dog food? No, b/c no one should be entertained by a creature getting slaughtered.

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It really isnt more human. I think I would rather have the air squeezed out of me then slowly freeze to death. :(
I feed every 5-7 days depending on when my girl is hungry, and I feed live because i breed live mice. If my snake was an aggressive one, I would switch to ft just because it is supposed to make them less aggressive.