BP friendly with live food. Help

[wilderpa]

We have a BP that is about 4' long. Don't know much about his background/age. Acquired him from someone being evicted who had to find a new home for him ASAP. He (I think it's a HE) is in a 50 gallon tank with lots of branches, leaves and a log cave. Things went well for several months. We have been successfully feeding him live rats. We decided to start raising rats ourselves to cut down on cost and all was well until this last few months. He will no longer eat and in fact he has gotten friendly with the food. He will go nose-to-nose with a rat and then wander off. This past week, after the nose-to-nose greeting, he went in his cave and curled up and he let the rat climb in his coils and sleep there. He has never been bitten. It has been about 2 months since he has eaten. He has shed twice since he last ate. Very worried about this behavior. Could it be that he smell us on the rats and doesn't eat them because he thinks they are us? Help please

[Monty44]

Do not leave the rat in the tank longer than two hours. It can cause serious harm to your snake.

[Joci]

Lol that's kinda cute �� I recommend taking the rat out and trying again in a week.

[piedlover79]

This time of year my male always stops eating. Also if you leave a rat in for more than fifteen minutes or so they can 'get use' to them. I just offer ever three weeks over the winter and if he takes it great, and if not I take the rat (well...mouse he refuses to eat rats) out. Last winter my male went five months without eating and without losing more than ten grams. Adult ball pythons are famous for 'hunger strikes' particularly as seasons change.

[PythonBabes]

Yup, same here Khaa will stop eating pretty soon. Last winter he didn't eat for four months, but I'm guessing it isn't the same amount of time every hunger strike. I offered a rat once a month and he never took it until he was nice and ready to.

Only good thing about his hunger strike is that it leaves my brothers and sisters a nice rat to play with over the winter haha.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

If the snake does not eat remove the rat within 10 to 15 min PERIOD.

Now the feeding issue will depends on a few factor

A/ Is the husbandry optimum? That means we need a full description of temps, type of thermometer used etc
B/ Size and sex (confirmed) of the animal in weight because 4 feet means nothing to most people, as it can be 4 feet underfed or 4 feet over fed. It's will also help establish a few other thing that can be encountered with animals at a certain weight of animal of a certain gender such as sexual maturity, or if the animal is going through "the wall."
C/ Prey size offered and feeding frequency. Adults can fast to catch up if overfed so getting an idea on that is important, feeding should also be different if you have a male or a female.

Without more info it's hard to comment on why the animal is not eating at this point.

[wilderpa]

Thank you to everyone for their input. We do not leave the rats in for long - maybe 5-10 minutes. This all happens very fast - rat gets put in, snake becomes aware and comes out and does the nose-to-nose thing, and then goes back into his cave. We remove rat.

We have not had him long enough to go from summer to fall/winter before, so that may be what is going on. We are in Kansas and just had a long month of 100 degree days and 70-80 degree nights (and we don't use A/C), but now we are having 50-60 degree nights (days are still hot - 80-90) so maybe he is sensing a change. Will continue to be patient with him.

Will also try to confirm sex and get a size so future texts can be more detailed. Again, thank you all.