My long, hard, frustrating year journey with my BP. Live to f/t only took a year

[ReptiMoto]

http://imgur.com/zHRuvgLThis is the story of my ball python for the past year. He has made me cry numerous times. Sorry about spelling or grammatical errors or timeline errors. I got him Aug 23 2015 and still have him today.



Many told me that a ball python would make a great first snake. I had wanted a snake for a few years (I'm 16 right now) and a year ago in August I decided to go to a reptile expo to look at ball pythons and hopefully get one. As I was walking around I saw a lady holding a beautiful black and white snake. I was praying that she would put him down and not buy him. Luckily she did and I picked him up to the surprise of how a snake felt (this was the first time I had actually held a snake). I told the man at the booth that I wanted to walk around more, he said "You can walk around with him!" I was shocked. I walked 10 feet with this snake in my hand and I knew it was meant to be. And that is how OSCAR became my Male Axanthic Ball python.


I got home and let him chill in his new tub for a few days before trying to feed him F/t. I never asked if he was fed f/t or live but soon came to the realization that he was fed live. After trying to feed him f/t for 4 weeks I was VERY VERY worried. He was getting skinny and there were no pet shops near my house that sold live babies. I tried feeding him a live mouse but he was scared of it and denied it. So I had to wait 3 weeks for the next reptile show so I could buy live fuzzy mice. He ate! That was the best feeling ever. I decided to try to feed f/t the next week by just placing it in his feeding tub (dont worry i have since gotten rid of it) and he ate it! I thought I was a pro. Anyway to make a long story short he had been on and off of f/t, usually denying it because it wasnt "ALIVE!!!". After around 4 months I had been worried obviously being 16 I am going to be moving away in a few years and cant imagine having a pet that required live food every week. I had made a 35+ year commitment and I was questioning if I should simply sell him. But I wasnt going to give up that easily. I then discovered pre killing. I first pre killed a rat with a butter knife using cervical dislocation. I hate killing live animals but i felt a little comfort knowing that I was using a very humane method. He took the pre killed rat!! I was soo happy. So than the next week I tried f/t but no luck once again. I then started pre killing and did that for about 8 weeks and he took everyone of the mice i killed. I then tried f/t again and he took it! But just struck and didnt swallow. I was worrying so much just wondering what I was doing wrong.

I was questioning if I would be able to keep him almost everyday he didnt eat. For about the past 2 months sometimes he would take the f/t rat but usually he wouldnt. The only place I can get rats is a 45 min drive, so i would buy about 5 at a time and he would eat the first one but than wouldnt eat the rest. I began to think that they were getting stale somehow. Anyways... I figured out the problem, I wasnt thawing them correctly! For some reason the rats would always thaw out hard. But I have recently been thawing them in hotter water and they come out squishy and more 'rat feeling'. For the past 6 weeks he has eaten continuously f/t everytime. I have been through hell and back with this snake, he has made me want to rip my hair out on numerous occasions. I think, no I know I have finally got him successfully switched and it only took a year XD

[oDRObinak]

kudos to you bud! hope your future has a place for him too!

[cchardwick]

Personally I don't think I'd feel comfortable killing a rat with a knife, that's a bit over the top LOL. I use CO2, those little BB gun CO2 canisters and I use them in a bicycle air pump. I put a valve stem in a Tupperware and drilled a very small hole in the top lid for the gas to escape. It costs me about a buck a shot to put down rodents but it's fast and easy and very humane.

I breed rats, mice, and African Soft fur rats and have 20 snakes, I do mostly pre-killed. I also use live rat pups, but I'm thinking of pre killing those as well, I had a snake last week bite one in the leg and he squealed for a long time, I finally had to take him away from the snake and give the snake another shot at it, poor little rat. It seems like my snakes prefer rat pups and rats over mice.

I do have two really thin snakes that are really picky. One is a CA king snake, he had an eye infection and lost one of his eyes, but is coming out of it and finally eating live mice crawlers. I also have a female AZ mt. king snake that I put with a male and she just stopped eating for months, was sooooo skinny. She is finally eating again too. I know how frustrating it can be if they don't eat.

Sometimes for picky eaters you can put a live rat pup in the tub and leave it in there for a couple hours or even overnight. They are totally harmless to the snake and it gives them a lot of opportunity to eat. But if you don't breed rats and don't have the mom you won't be able to keep it alive if the snake doesn't eat.

That's good to know about using hotter water for getting rats to soften up, I've been having that problem myself. I usually buy a few frozen thawed from Rodentpro.com because I need some bigger rodents for my big snakes (small and med rats) and I can't raise them fast enough to get that big on a consistent basis. Once my dwarf reticulated python gets to size I'll probably need to order Jumbo rats!

[Reinz]

Way to go RM! Your persistence paid off.

[cletus]

Good to hear that it finally worked out for you! Congrats!

[ReptiMoto]

Yah killing the mice and rats using the cervical dislocation method was not fun at all. I remember watching a YouTube video on how to do it and just thinking to myself "can I really do this?" It took me about an hour to actually kill the first rat because I felt sooooo baaaaaaad. But it got easier and knowing that my ball python will benefit is the only reason I did it. I am thinking about moving to Colorado to be a wind turbine technician and im pretty sure they dont have that many reptile shops around so getting him on f/t is SOOO BIG for me knowing I can have him all his life.