Not Eating, Weight

[Inarikins]

Have pics? Could just be breeding season fasting, too. I've had great luck getting my off-feed normal boy to eat after shedding, he's always ravenous afterwards.

[satomi325]

Sounds more like 'the wall' than a breeding fast since she is quite young.
I personally look at physical condition(what Jen described) over the weight % thing. However, I do believe the weight % people usually use is more than 10% loss in body weight.

Have you tried mice to coax her to eat? All of my snakes are rat feeders, but I often use mice to jump start a feeding response.

[Marissa@MKmorphs]

Yup. She is a 2011 female who went off food in mid December. She only took f/t rats for me previously, and since her fast I have been offering food every week (rotations through live and f/t mice and rats). She is looking pretty terrible. She went from 800ish to 650ish grams in the past 5 months and she looks very thin.


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[lX V1P3R Xl]

No, I haven't tried mice to coax her into eating. I'd rather not even introduce her to mice to be honest. As far as I know, she has never seen one and since BP's usually like mice better, I'd rather keep it that way haha. I'll try live when I get home if she hasnt eaten by then. It looks like she may be beginning her first shed cycle in 3 months so maybe she'll eat after that. Like I said, I'm not too worried about her weight or fast at this point. I was just curious as to what the weight loss % when I should begin to be slightly worried. Thanks

[FireStorm]

Yup. She is a 2011 female who went off food in mid December. She only took f/t rats for me previously, and since her fast I have been offering food every week (rotations through live and f/t mice and rats). She is looking pretty terrible. She went from 800ish to 650ish grams in the past 5 months and she looks very thin.


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I'm assuming you've made sure that your husbandry is correct and she has plenty of hiding places, etc. If all that hasn't helped, it may be worth a shot to treat for internal parasites. We had a female that was not eating and starting to lose weight, and she went back to pounding food after being treated.

[LLLReptile]

I would try scenting with mice just to give it a shot. If they're starting to look worrisome skinny, then I'd be more concerned with putting weight on them than what exactly they'll be eating.

I also have had surprising success by skipping a week, waiting to see if the snake is poking just its head out of the hide, and then offering a rat that seems too big. I had an import male that hadn't eaten in over 10 months (so skinny a small rat would have been a big enough meal) start POUNDING good sized large rats. Once he started eating, he started eating everything, so I switched down to smaller, more appropriate sized meals, but that first one was definitely not what I expected. That same idea has worked for kickstarting snakes that were fasting during the breeding season, so it's worth a shot. A coworker suggested a while back, with the reasoning that maybe because the snake has gone a while without eating, it's waiting for something too good to be true to come by as a meal, rather than wasting energy on something smaller.

In any case, whatever the reason, that works for me sometimes. Worth a shot!

-Jen