Using mostly cool hide, hasn’t poop since last feeding.

[Jdrum6]

I have had a ball python for about 4 weeks(Saturday). She is about 80 ish grams and she is in a 10 gal tank with a 40 watt incandescent for the ambient temps to be kept around 84ish degrees on the hot side. She has a UTH regulated with a thermostat and the hot spot reads 91 degreees. Cool side is reading 78 degrees. Humidity stays around 63% during the day and then can sometimes get up to around 73% at night. Also, she is on cypress mulch. Anyways, she ate fine for me for the first two meals, her third is supposed to be tomorrow. She used her hide on the warm side more than the one on the cooler side for the most part for the first 3 Ish weeks I had her with going over to the cooler hide for awhile to thermoregulate and then come back. After last weeks feeding, she has no mainly used to cooler hide over the warm one. She normally comes out around 10 pm, will roam for awhile(she does go on the hot side but hasn’t really stayed in the warm hide more than 2 or 3 times for short periods of time over the past week that I am seeing. However, I have had the ability to check on her a lot during the past week and for the amount I check on her I should have at least seen her in the other hide once w/o me having to guide her into it. With that said, she has not pooped since last Friday. She was pooping fine after I brought her home for that first week and then fine after the first feed. Since her last feed, she hasn’t not pooped. What should I do now? And should I still feed her tomorrow? Thanks you!

[Zincubus]

Hi ..

What are you using to take the temps ??

Nothing like these hopefully ..




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[Jdrum6]

No way, I use a IR

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Funny enough, she just went into the hide lol

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Either way, she still spent 80% of her time in the cool hide this week though.

[Zincubus]

No way, I use a IR

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Funny enough, she just went into the hide lol

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Either way, she still spent 80% of her time in the cool hide this week though.

Lovely !


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[Jdrum6]

What about all the other things I said in the post?

[Craiga 01453]

What size prey are you feeding? If the prey is too small she's using up essentially 100% of her meal to sustain growth, leaving nothing to poop out

[Jdrum6]

Well she did poop twice the first week I fed her. But I’m feeding hoppers.

[Craiga 01453]

If you're talking mouse hoppers they're too small. BPs only eat hoppers for their first 3-5 meals typically before moving up to small adult mice.

[Bogertophis]

As already mentioned, her prey is too small. FYI, snakes do not always defecate once for each meal they eat, and ESPECIALLY when the meals are too small (as Craig already explained). Also, when a snake starts preferring their cool hide, it often means they're going into shed. If that's the case, some snakes want to eat anyway, & others don't. In the wild, they'd skip the meal (since it's dangerous to try to hunt with impaired vision) & IF you feed a snake in shed, some will eat anyway but it can mess up their shed (don't say no one told you, lol). The reason it messes up their shed is that both digestion AND shedding requires good hydration from their body, and doing both at once sometimes just doesn't work well, so either they barf up their meal (potentially harmful & best avoided, by the way) OR their shed gets stuck on & peels only in a zillion pieces. For those reasons, best to skip a meal IF your snake's eyes are clouding. (check them in dark room with a flashlight- the "fog" shows up better that way)

[Jdrum6]

Oh wow, that’s good info. So if her eyes aren’t cloudy, then she’s good to be fed tonight then? Also, the hoppers I got are the ones you’d move to after fuzzies I’m pretty sure. So Since those are too small, I’ll see if I can find a place around me that sells feeders and if not, I’ll order them and feed her the hopper tonight if her eyes are not Cloudy.