HELP! BP Feeding Prob!

[BallPython713]

Hello,

I haven't been on the forums for like ages, but here I am again with a problem. To be short, my BP hasn't eaten a solid meal in possibly 3 months. Solid meal being a sm-md rat. Around maybe a month ago it ate an adult rat. She's around 3-3 1/2' long, so I know she needs more than a mouse. I had been feeding her sm. rats when she decided not to eat anymore. Tonight, I tried a live sm. rat, but to no avail. So I knocked it our with some CO2, and still nothing. So I fully euthanized it and tried, but still no results. I even tried stimulating her by rubbing a frozen mouse on the rat (it has worked before). Right now, the rat's inside her cage...I'm hoping she'll eat. So, I guess that wasn't too short , but do you have any suggestions?? Thanks,

Brad

[Adam_Wysocki]

Assuming that your temps are 82-84 on the "cool" side and 92-94 on the hot and that your snake has a great deal of security and it healthy ....

Maybe the small rats you've been feeding her are actually too large for her and now she is fasting to "catch up".

Ball pythons have very slow metabolisms and don't need meals that are as wide as their girth as is recommended for other large bodied snakes. When fed smaller sized meals they definitely eat more consistently and more regularly. When fed larger meals than they need they tend to binge on them for weeks or months and then shut down and fast while their bodies catch up to what they've been taking in. The binge/fast behavior will continue throughout the year.

Personally, I prefer all of my ball pythons to eat every time they are offered food so I stick with smaller sized prey items. Even my largest breeder females are only offered small rats.

-adam

[neithersparky]

Yeah, what Adam said sounds good. My girl is big enough, girth-wise, to take small rats...and she took a couple when I started offering them, then quit. She wouldn't eat for over a month. I popped a mouse in there, BAM, she ate it. I went back to rats...nothing. Offered another mouse - it was gone in less than an hour. She's *never* refused a mouse.

I'm staying with mice, at least for a while. She eats regularly (again) now, and she's also more active at night these days, prolly because she's not trying to digest a Super Size meal. I'd rather feed more often, and have her eating and active.

[BallPython713]

Thanks for the imput! I'll try getting maybe some mice for her...would like 2"-3" young rats be ok? the lady at my local petshop has more rodents than she can sometimes handel and gives some of them free to me to feed to my snake. I know she has the young rats...and has already offered to give them to me So did you kill, or knock out the mouse before you put it in the cage? or did you let it run around and eventually the snake got it?

[BallPython713]

Well, I guess even if is was a small rat it would still smell like a rat...the petstore also has a lot of mice that I could probably get for free too.

[neithersparky]

My own personal suggestion is, especially with rats, not to feed live - and that's not because of the safety issue. It's just that...that's how I ended up with pet rats. Duchess wouldn't eat the small rat I gave her, I had to to take it out, put it in a holding tank, and re-offer it every several days. In the meantime, it got big real fast, and very soon it was simply too big for her to take even if she had wanted it. I know I didn't have to keep it, that was my choice...but before I made the decision to keep him as a pet he was a hassle to take care of since I wasn't prepared for it. I bought him a friend and now I have two pampered rats who won't let me touch them, lol. (They're cute though...)

[BallPython713]

OK, well last night I tried to feed my BP a f/t mouse and gerbal, but he still didn't eat. So I left them in overnight and low and behold, this morning they were gone and there was a firm spot on his belly. YEAH!!! Hopefully, he'll start to eat again.