3 year old has stopped eating for 8 months again!

[Tahoetink]

I have a 3 year old who has stopped eating again and we are going on 8 months. He has dropped 500g in those 8 months. We have force fed him once last month per direction from the vet after all other avenues were a fail (listed below). My concern is that he used to be a religious feeder and was great. He had a bad reaction to coconut at about 1.5 years of age and went off of food when he got a skin infection from the coconut. He finally went back on after 8 months, ate about 3 months, then discovered the ladies and went off of food now for 8 months. He was at 1768g in August (the last time he ate), I just weighed him last night and he is 1274g. He literally flees from the rats. We have tried it all. We feed frozen thawed but below are all the things we have tried:

• Live
• heating the F/T above 100degrees
• keeping it cooler
• braining
• quail
• chicks
• scenting (vanilla, mouse, gerbil)
• feeding out of the enclosure
• feeding at different times of days
• changing keeping him in a different room other than the females for a month
• taking him on a drive
• decreasing/increasing the humidity
• not offering for months
• leaving the food in overnight

We are now at the point where I can only think that we will need bloodwork or imaging. Does anyone have any other ideas? Normally I wouldn't be concerned but he has loss too much weight and he is getting lethargic. We have force fed him and he regurgitated it once. He is a very sweet snake and I really don't want to traumatize him as he will avoid us for days when he is put through too much. What am I missing? Is there anything that I could try before we start poking and prodding or are we at that point?

[Lord Sorril]

Based on your description: I suspect you have an issue with your enclosure setup and config. Smaller ball pythons are more tolerant of a wider range of conditions than older/larger ones.

[Tahoetink]

Based on your description: I suspect you have an issue with your enclosure setup and config. Smaller ball pythons are more tolerant of a wider range of conditions than older/larger ones.

He has pretty much been in the same set-up since he was born. Just larger as he grew. Right now he is in a 4x2x2 PVC enclosure. Daytime temps low 80/ high 85 with humidity on hygrometer thermostat at 65%. He has 2 hides, multiple basking levels on both sides and across the enclosure with climbing structures that he takes full advantage of every night. He is 4.5ft. He has hanging and ground plants logs.

I’m not saying it isn’t something about his enclosure but I don’t know what it would be. We did keep him a tote for a month plus and he still didn’t eat. Not sure 🤔 maybe one of his rats maybe had parasites? I just don’t know. What would you change? I’m watching him right now and he’s is cruising around doing his nightly roam.

[Homebody]

I can feel your frustration and I sympathize. Pics of your BP and his set up may help us advise you better. Include a description of his heating elements and thermostats since that's not always apparent from pictures. This thread will show you how to post pics to your thread: https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...-Post-Pictures.

[dakski]

How you are taking temps is important as well. Are you taking them with an IR temp gun? Are those ground temps?

How often are you offering food? Over offering will stress him out more.

Also - you mention logs and plants. What about hides? How many? What type?

How often are you changing the substrate?

The more information the better. We want to help but need more data to do that.

[Tahoetink]

Thank you. I have two hides for him in addition to the logs/bark decor that he can hide under as well. One on each of the sides the enclosure. There’s numerous ways for me to check his temps. I have Govee Wi-Fi Bluetooth hygrometer thermometers, and temp gun. All heating elements are also attached to a Wi-Fi ink bird thermostat. he is in our snake room, which is normally kept at 75°. Each snake is in their own enclosure not in a rack system. He has a heat projector on the hot side. The thermostat is a dimming thermostat. We offer in food once every two weeks at this stage. And we have downsized the offerings to pups. He literally fleas from them if I offer them by Tom‘s. If I leave it in there, he will pay no mention to it and just cruise over it and continue on with his night as though it wasn’t there. I have completely removed all of his substrate in the past and gone bare minimum to Just paper towels to know affect as well. We do deep cleans and sanitizing of plastics, etc., once a month. I’ve given him Electrolyte soaks and also a Dawn dish soap rub down thinking maybe he could somehow smell a female on him.

Sorry for the long rambling paragraph I am doing this talk to text. I will get a photo of the enclosure tonight. Somebody mentioned to try Panacur just in case one of the frozen thawed rats I got from our supplier possibly had parasites. We have it for our horses, but I’m just not sure if I’m comfortable trying to figure out the dosage on that. I have sterilize that enclosure so many times I can’t even tell you. Every time I do a deep clean, we use F10 to say this little man is my favorite out of all of them is an understatement. He is probably the sweetest snake I have ever met, and I would be devastated to lose him.

[Tahoetink]

I will add that I don’t use belly heat specifically because this fella has a habit of making little nests and swirling down to the bottom of the PVC. I don’t want him to burn himself. It’s not worth the risk. If I could be confident that he wouldn’t remove the substrate and make these little nests, and I could have the barrier between the PVC and heat mat thicker than I would consider belly heat. He does have an enclosure underneath him, though, which has An overhead heat source, so some of that heat actually does warm up the bottom of his floor. But not to a point of making it hot to burning levels.

[EL-Ziggy]

Idk, it sounds like your setup is fine. It never hurts to recheck those temps though. I've had BPs stop eating for 8 and 12 months before and they were just fine. If you think he may be ill, then take him for a vet visit. If he's just being a stubborn BP then keep offering food once a month until he decides to eat. I've always had the mindset that any animal will eat almost anything if they're hungry enough. I've never seen a healthy animal starve itself to death when food was available. Best wishes and I hope he eats again soon.