So... 5 year old adult male with no prior problems has stopped eating for 7 months

[Skyrivers]

Do they prefer sports or muscle cars to get in the mood?

Mine prefer 4x4 trucks.

[Skyrivers]

Hello guys! I'm wondering if anyone knows what I might try next...

The issue is in the title: Yukon, my 5 year old adult male who has never had feeding issues in his life, and who I've had since he was only a hatchling, has not eaten for around 7 months. I normally think that it isn't an issue when they don't lose significant weight, but he has now lost fairly significant weight, and would be considered "skinny" for a ball python.

He just shows basically zero interest in food, and rarely comes out of his hide either. I've been offering around once a month, as I usually do for any ball pythons who fast. He doesn't have any external symptoms, like no bloating or anything like that. He looks normal but just skinny now...

Does anyone have experience with this and have suggestions?

I have 2 3 year old BPs and they both took a 4 (not 7 months but have heard of some taking a year off food) month break from eating and just started eating again. I offer once every 2 weeks. My female is pounding rats now and my male is going "I guess I will eat..." Both loss less than 30 grams in 4 months of not eating. My husbandry never changed. They both just loss interest in food and wanted to breed. My female is not ready yet but my boy is. They don't know that though and their enclosures are right next to each other. I am sure they can smell each other. I started to worry some but I kept reminding myself that they are BPs and will do this sometimes. I have a breeder friend that breeds her own rats also. She said that she hates winter. Her 40 or so BPs go off food for a few months and the rats keep coming. To bad she lives 3 hours away or would help her dispose of some with my retics and boas who rarely miss meals. Not sure what your experience is but if he is healthy and not loosing weight he just doesn't know that winter is over yet. You might have more experience than me. I just know what my guys do and have done the past 2 winters and what my breeder friend goes through. I told her she needed a boa to keep the retic or carpet to keep the population down. She laughed and told me if I ever breed them she would love to have one. Hmmmmmm……. I do have 3 pet stores that would buy them right away...… but should I?

[Bogertophis]

I'll add that years back when I too kept BPs, mine did this fasting also...not when they were young, but as adults, & around the same # of years. I'm been much happier
keeping colubrids & such- I re-homed my BPs to fellow herp soc members who were into them. That was long before there was a forum like this to help me de-code them,
but it wouldn't have mattered, they just aren't my favorite snakes.

[dr del]

Hi,

Since I know you know what your doing I assume you have already triple checked temps to rule out equipment failure.

Which alternative prey items have you tried? Mine go nuts for chicks but refuse ASF's and sometimes a mouse will tempt fussy beggars.

Where is the snake spending most of the time in the enclosure ( little worried about the weight loss ) as mine stay on the cool end if they aren't eating which obviously slows their metabolism and minimises weight loss.

Does anything else seem off behaviour or activity level wise?


del

[redshepherd]

Put your snake in a snake bag and take it for a car ride for 30 min to an hour. I know it sounds crazy but it works from getting them to eat to starting to breed.

Is this for real? :0 I actually legitimately can't tell whether you might be joking or not LOL, but I will try it if it works!!

Hi,

Since I know you know what your doing I assume you have already triple checked temps to rule out equipment failure.

Which alternative prey items have you tried? Mine go nuts for chicks but refuse ASF's and sometimes a mouse will tempt fussy beggars.

Where is the snake spending most of the time in the enclosure ( little worried about the weight loss ) as mine stay on the cool end if they aren't eating which obviously slows their metabolism and minimises weight loss.

Does anything else seem off behaviour or activity level wise?


del

Yes, the equipment is still working unfortunately! LOL :S

I've just tried between f/t rats, mice, and chicks so far. I was pondering whether to try to feed live, but I still haven't with the paranoia that he will then get stuck on live. But actually it might be worth trying at this point...

He spends basically all of his time on the warm end which I guess is not helping with his maintaining weight! He's considerably skinny now for an adult...

Behavior/activity wise, he's definitely been much much less active and seems quite lethargic/droopy when I try to handle him. He still moves a bit but seems limp compared to in the past. I also used to see him out and about like looking for food at night for a few minutes a week or so, but I basically never see him out of his hide at all now/doesn't move much from his spot. I've been handling him at a bare minimum ever since he started refusing.

edit: He also still drinks water, so that's at least good and probably isn't due to dehydration

[vivi]

Put your snake in a snake bag and take it for a car ride for 30 min to an hour. I know it sounds crazy but it works from getting them to eat to starting to breed.

I´m not doubting you, but I´m curious how this helps?

[Bogertophis]

Is this for real? :0 I actually legitimately can't tell whether you might be joking or not LOL, but I will try it if it works!! ...

I'm sure Deborah is serious, even though it does sound ridiculous. I've also heard that doing a complete deep cage cleaning may help too. I wish I'd had more of these kind of suggestions to try back when I had BPs, it might have helped. BPs can really frustrate a keeper, & when I kept them, I had a very full house & decided they would be better off with those who specialized in them, since they were so "needy". You'd be forgiven for back-sliding to live prey...no one enjoys seeing a pet snake they care about just starving themselves & if this forum had been around back then, I might not have given up...but I really did have a house-FULL* of snakes besides just some BPs, so my time & patience had their limits. (*I currently have 19 snakes & most ppl would consider that a "house-full" but my current house is smaller & trust me, I had way more snakes then, lol.)

As for why a car ride or cage cleaning or other environmental changes might help...maybe it just shakes them out of their complacency & triggers a survival mode? Who knows?

[CALM Pythons]

Well you just explained both my adults Balls... every year they go off from around Aug/Sep till last week... like Clock Work... they are around 2000 gram Balls and they drop to about 1800 each year.. healthy as horses.. this past year I decided to stop wasting Rats trying and waited until 3 weeks ago when I seen their heads out at night looking around.. I let them go until it was Burm feeding day and smelled the Thawing Rats...so their back on. I only feed them once a month anyways. They stopped every week and every other week after they were about 1.5 years. I watch their behavior and if they are real active sometimes they will want a extra meal here or there.


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[Stewart_Reptiles]

Is this for real? :0 I actually legitimately can't tell whether you might be joking or not LOL, but I will try it if it works!!

It is, it's an old school keeper's trick, some breeders even take it further sometime by shipping the animal to a trusted friend. Something about movement and change of environment somehow triggers them into feeding and or breeding behaviour.

I have done it a few times with animals that stop feeding and for which every adjustment failed and within 3 to 5 days they resume feeding.

[Craiga 01453]

It is, it's an old school keeper's, some breeders even take it further sometime by shipping the animal to a trusted friend. Something about movement and change of environment somehow triggers them into feeding and or breeding behaviour.

I have done it a few times with animals that stop feeding and for which every adjustment failed and within 3 to 5 days they resume feeding.

That's extremely interesting. So often moving an adult can kick a food strike into gear.

Just goes to show there's not a "one size fits all" approach to these goofballs.

Thanks for the insight, Deb. I certainly NEVER would have thought of that.

Good luck, Red, please keep us posted.