Good morning!

[MD_Pythons]

Hi all.

She's still not eating. The last time she ate was on 02/24. We purchased her on 02/26. Tomorrow is a month since she's eaten and Monday is a month since we've had her.

Enclosure is warm side is 88 the cool side is 77 and humidity is 57. We have 2 hides, aspen earth a climbing branch and a water bowl.

She hides majority of the day but sometimes we will find her on top of her hide and sometimes balled up on the branch. Later on in the afternoon she will come out and start cruising the whole enclosure.

We have seen her drink water on several occasions so I don't think she's getting dehydrated.

But her not wanting to eat is starting to get a bit frustrating (and yes, we even tried the hairdryer trick).

We have never once seen her tongue flick out. Don't they do that when they know food is around? Starting to wonder if there's even a tongue in there!

We will put it in front of her and wiggle it and sometimes she will act like shes knows it's there and stare at it, then she will turn her head and leave. We will do this for a good while as to not give up on her and eventually she goes back in a hide.

Is a vet visit in order?

I haven't been following along with this thread, but you should look into downsizing your enclosure. There's a thread on this here.

[Phillydubs]

Have you offered live prey or only frozen?

ever warm it up real good and just leave it? Lights off make it nice and dark?

when are you feeding anyways ? What time of day?

[Maybeka]

So far only tried to feed f/t. (that's what she was on when we got her and she had supposedly eaten 4 times prior to us getting her.
Lights are off so it's dark in the room. We have even left it outside the hide for a bit after heating it up.
We have tried feeding between 8 and 9 pm after she's out and cruising around.

[Phillydubs]

It may we worth it to try live and see if she takes it or how that works. At this point it’s trial and error.

Do you habe a scale. Any idea what she weighed if she’s loosing weight etc?

a month isn’t a long time for a snake but a young snake should be eating pretty well.

[Maybeka]

A week ago she was 104g.
Hate to disturb her as we haven't messed with her at all, but we are going to weigh her again tonight.

[Maybeka]

This was her 2 days ago, just hanging out.

[Maybeka]

She is 102g tonight.
We have a vet appt for her this coming Tuesday.

[Maybeka]

May be a dumb question... But how do we transport her to the vet with the least amount of stress?
We have a tiny carrier that in enclosed...meaning no screens just a few holes for air. Should we use that with a towel in it?

[Maybeka]

Good morning again !

A little background on me..... i will strike up a conversation with anyone in any store or anywhere. That being said:

My husband and i struck up a conversation with a very nice young man in a store last weekend. I am not even sure how the conversation turned to snakes between them but it did. Turns out this young man has several ball pythons and has successfully raised quite a few clutches.

We were telling him the issue we have with my sons Ball python Mia not eating and he offered to come over and take a look at her.

He came last night with a little live mouse (bigger than a fuzzy). She totally refused to eat it and acted as if she didn't know it was even there turning her head and ignoring it. Again, we have never seen this snakes tongue in the month we have had her (yesterday was one month since he purchase her).

He said my sons setup was good, temps are good, humidity was good everything looked fine.

He looked in her mouth and said it smelled funny. Didn't see any mouth rot but has a funny smell.

Guess what else he found? She has NO TONGUE ! Not even a teeny tiny one. He said he has seen them born with misshapen tongues before, but she has no tongue at all !

Now i know he got her at Petsmart, but how on earth can Petsmart say that she ate 4 times prior to him getting her if we cannot get her to eat at all?

I know we are new at this, but isn't the tongue part of the heat seeking mechanism that helps them find their warm food?

My son is not a happy camper.

First Petsmart sold him a snake for double the amount of the other snake that was there because they called her a "Fancy" ball. He said she is a normal (can't tell if she may have something else in their but he called her a very pretty colored normal and that was all she is).
Second if she has no tongue shouldn't the breeder have seen this and not sent her to the store?

We are taking her to the vet later this afternoon to confirm the no tongue (even though he showed us there was none) and see what the vet says about the smell in her mouth.

My son defrosted a frozen mouse and this young man baaaaarely opened her mouth just a little and put the nose of the mouse in her mouth and as soon as she felt it on her tongue there was no force feeding, she went for it! Success on at least getting a meal in her last night. He said it was the easiest assist feed he has ever done.

So my questions for everyone here and the vet are:

Can she live with no tongue?
Can she live a normal long life?
Will she learn to get her food with no tongue or will she have to be assist fed her whole entire life?

If the vet determines that she cannot eat on her own how on earth do we assist feed a 4 foot long adult Ball
forever?

Oh and he checked her out and said that Mia is in fact a girl.

Sorry for such a long post but this is frustrating and not what we expected.

Petsmart corporate office is going to get a "nice" e-mail from me.

[Maybeka]

Sorry, I should have said as soon as she felt it (the mouse) in her mouth, not felt it on her tongue since there is no tongue.