Small BP Not Feeding After Month SOS

Hello all, first post here. SOS = Save Our Snake, duh duh chhhhhh. I couldn't decide whether to put this is the general or husbandry forum, sorry if i chose wrong. This may be a little long winded but I want to make sure I explain In detail.

I bought my first snake a month ago. She is a normal ball python named Lucy. She is a great snake and seemed healthy. I got her from a small reptile place, they have a few BPs, but mostly corns and lizards. Of course when I bought her the lady said she had been feeding fine. She is pretty small right now, which is why I bought her. The biggest part of her body is probably the size of a nickel or a quarter and when fully stretched out she is probably about 16 inches long. She is not very big at all. She seems to be way smaller than she should be for her length, especially being a female but then again her head is really small too. Can anybody give me an estimate of her age? I have had her for a month now, and she will not eat for me. I have tried everything. The lady said she had been eating live so that is what I tried first with a hopper mouse (white) after letting her settle in for a week. I made sure that it was very dark when I first tried to feed her and held the mouse by the tail with a very long pair of needle nose pliers i have, they are probably 14 or so inches, and I made sure she could not see my hand. I tried to feed her in a box with a hide that i had put the mouse in for a little while to scent it. Then I put her in there and let her adjust for like an hour. I tried my best to make everything perfect. She acted like she wasn't even the least bit interested. After about 20 mins I put the mouse up and put her back in her cage and left her be figuring she needed to adjust more for another week only opening the cage to change her water once a day. The next week I tried to feed her again, at one point she came out of the hide lifted her head up about 2 inches from the mouse bobbed and weaved a little for prolly 2 minutes and then turned and crawled away. 3 days later I decided to try and give her a fresh killed mouse. I put it on a rock in her cage and left it overnight. I dreamt she ate it but when I woke up it was still laying there unfortunately. I tried another live mouse that weekend, I drove to every pet store within 40 miles that im aware of and could not find any pinkies so I settled for another hopper. She didn't eat after a fresh kill in her cage again overnight. Last Saturday (4 days ago) I tried to feed her live again with a half gray and white hopper, No dice. I havent weighed her yet but I can see that she has lost weight since I have had her by her skin wrinkling a little. Being that young and small she has to hungry, despite everything I have read about BPs fasting and whatnot.

I have made every effort to provide perfect husbandry. I will include a pic of her cage as well as Lucy in my profile pics. She was in the same kind of cage when I bought her also. I have a glass tank with aspen sunstrate, 2 hides, nice big waterbowl for her and sticks to crawl. The ambient temp is 81-82 with a warm and cool side.The humidity stays around 50-60%, misting a few times every other day or so. Her heat source is a clamp style light with a black colored bulb. I figured I would get the black bulb so that she can get light from my room through the day and at night she will have darkness and still have warmth.Im up late most of the time, but I keep the light off of her cage to provide night/day light ratio.

Her behavior seems normal for what I have read. She will crawl around a little after dark and around daylight.SHe crawls through her hides, on the sticks and sometimes through her waterbowl. Sometimes at night I will be on the computer below her and she will come to the front of her cage and look down at me. She has no signs of respiratory infection that I can tell and looks healthy except for her weight. She has me stumped. She Is stressing me out bad because she will not eat. Being this small I figure she has to eat before too long or she will die. Can anyone provide me with some advice on what I can do? Like I said it is really stressing me out because I would feel horrible if she did die because of something I did wrong and I dont know if I could own another snake after that for fear of the same thing happening. I don't know. Can anyone offer me any advice or insight as to what I should do?

tl;dr = Small snake wont eat, good husbandry as far as I know, HELP!!!!

What is your hot spot at? My hot spot stays around 88-91 deg. I had a female go off feed for 7 months but barley lost any weight. Have you given her time to settle? Is she in a room were there is a lot of movement to disturb her, like cats or dogs or even people. She may just need to be left alone for awhile. skip a week and try and feed her again. I would get a scale if you do not have one to monitor her weight. As long as shes not dropping to much weight I would not worry and leave her alone. You can always take her to a vet and get a check up on her make sure she doesn't have any parasites or anything. Do you know if shes captive bred or wild caught? If shes wild caught I would get to the vet ASAP. Can you take some pics of the setup that would help also, and of the snake.

Hi,

The pics of her setup might help.

Have you tried feeding her live in her own enclosure rather than moving her?

What weight is she at the moment?


dr del

I apologize I forgot to add the pics of her enclosure last night I will do that now. I Have also tried feeding her live in her own cage, but she just isnt interested. Her hot spot is probably about 86-88 but she hardly ever basks in it. I just found out about a new pet shop that Im gonna visit before work to see what they have as far as food.

Sorry for the double post. or some reason, probably because im new, it wouldn't let me upload any photos to my gallery. Here is a link to my photobucket where you can view them.
http://s27.photobucket.com/albums/c160/xzx_patrick_xzx/

Hi,

http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...x/Lucycage.jpg

I would suggest using much smaller identical hides one on each end of the tank - ideally they should touch the snake on all sides.

This needn't cost much as plant pot drip saucers turned upside down with a notch in the side work extremely well. ;)

If you cover the top of the screen lid with tinfoil it will help with humidity and heat retention so you could get away with a much smaller waterbowl.

You also want the temp inside the hot end hide to be 90-94f.

The basic idea is to make him feel as secure and safe as possible. :)


dr del

She may just be a shy eater, and if you're standing there holding the mouse she might not eat. I'd suggest getting a live hopper or small adult mouse (pinks are way too small) and putting it in her enclosure. Then leave the room for 20 mins or so. I've had some hatchlings that won't eat if I'm in the room...they seem to grow out of it after a while.

Thanx for the replies guys. Im just really worried because her skin is looking really saggy.Does their skin get kinda loose when they are about to shed? Her belly looks kinda pink but not very noticeable at all. She also has little white flake looking things on her head. I have been keeping a close watch on the humidity and keeping it around %60. She is driving me crazy. All I want is to provide good care for her. It just really concerns me because she is really small and hasn't ate in a month :(. I got a mouse to try and feed her yesterday and had it in my truck while i was at work. I gave it a tortilla chip, air holes, and heat every break but when i got home and dumped it in the cage it was dead. I heated it with a hair dryer and put it in her cage. She came over and looked at it but quickly lost interest. So after about 30 minutes I just disposed of it. Ill get another this weekend and try to feed her live in a few days. I thank you guys alot tho.

Here is a pic I took while cleaning her cage where you can see where her skin is loose and saggy. Im afraid she is losing alot of weight.
http://i27.photobucket.com/albums/c1...x/DSC01180.jpg

be sure the mouse is good and HOT

As thin as she is, if she was mine I would probably offer her a live mouse and if she didn't eat that I would assist feed her a rat pink or mouse hopper (prekilled obviously). I believe there is a sticky on here with directions on how to assist feed.

Hi,

I agree with Firestorm - that is a lot more lateral skin lines than I was expecting to see.

I would try soaking her a little - use 85f water no deeper than half way up her body and supervise at all times. 15 minutes to half an hour should do it I think.

Can you get clear picture of the white flake looking things you mentioned?

Shedding does in deed cause skin folds but they tend to be from top to bottom when the snake bends not runnign the length of the animal.

And here is the sticky on assist feeding if it does come to that.

As an aside when offering dead prey you usually have to either do the zombie mouse dance or present it to the snake - only one of mine eats from the ground currently.

Have you increased the temp of her hotspot yet?


dr del

I think you should make a setup in a small curverbox, I think her house is too big.
You will need a hotspot as big as one third of the box and put in a small hidingplace where she just fits in. And a waterbowl.
The hotspot needs to be 33 degrees Celcius.

Put the setup in a dark room and leave her alone for a week or so.

Big chance she will eat again.

If you want to try f/t, try changing your substrate to paper towel or news paper and just set it barely outside her hide and leave the room. I've had mine take it easier this way even being the pickiest eater I own. Just make sure it's at least room temp or if possible heat the head up with a blow dryer on high heat for 3-5mins then set it down make sure the lights are out in the room too.

It could be a mix between a really shy snake and the moving when trying to feed that's causing it to not eat. The plus side of f/t is you can leave it in over night, just make sure to take it out in the morning before it starts to stink.

Hi,

When I used a substrate like bark I put a piece of slate on the top of it in front of the hides. When I offered F/T overnight for fussy eaters I would lay it on there.

And, since it was outside the hide in the "killing field" most of the time they struck from the hide they ended up eating on top of it then too. :)

It cut down on the amount of substrate they swallowed. Didn't completely eliminate it though as newspaper did.


dr del

Ive had luck with noneater by puting them in a plane small paper bag with a rat pup. And the other way has been said keep the temp up. And try a smaller inclosure.

Im about to go to new pet shop around here. Currently all i can find is full grown mice, and small rats but the rats are way too big for her. I Gave her a smaller hide the other day and i moved the heating lamp to where it is shining straight down into the cage. Would an UTH Be better? Truthfully I shouldn't have bout this particular snake and just waited and bought from a quality breeder. Lessons are learned hard sometimes, but im not giving up. If she doesn't eat the next time I am Going to try assist feeding her.