ok when i was 13 i had a ball python for about a year, loved it, but i moved and my mother made me give it away, well now im a adult, found out about a reptile expo that was coming up and decided to get another ball python.

i went to the expo this sunday, and bought the basics, a 15 tall gallon tank, bad of aspen bedding, water dish, small hiding cave, UTH under that, temperature strip, and a 75 watt blue bulb. And of course the ball python. The way i picked him out is i basically went to every stand that were selling ball pythons and looked for the nicest one, finally after visiting three different breeders i see one with like 30 CB Ball Pythons in there and ONE shined the most out of the rest, it was the brightest and cleanest looking one, i observed it close and noticed it moves around alot, flickered his tongue etc etc, the things u are supposed to look for in a healthy snake. So i grabbed him up, judging from the size i would say he must have just hatched last month the earliest. Hes maybe 15-16 inches and the widest part of his body is maybe 1, or maybe 1.2 inches.

Ok, so i take him home, set everything up and since then (last sunday) he would not come out of the hiding cave whats so ever unless i bring him out, i have barely handled him much since i got him. Anyways today i finally decided to try and feed him, so i buy a small white mice from my local pet store, got a box, placed the snake in the box and dropped the mice in, after a minute or 2 the snake took interest and would strike at the mouse, but it was as if he could not get a grib on the mouse or coil, the snake striked the mouse atleast 5 times, in one of which when he striked the mouse kind of bit him i think because after which he burried his head in a coil, after that he would just look at the mouse and not even strike, finally i figuered i would help him out and i hit the mouse a few time with the end of a curtain hanger, well, i did know how easy it was to kill a mouse but i ended up like taking half his neck of, blood everywhere and the few second before the mouse died he was having like a stroke and the snake striked one last time but still no coil.

After that i dangled the dead mouse around and the snake would only look at it but wasent even striking at all, after a while he just lost interest and slidered away from the dead mouse. So fustrated i place him back in his cage and he quickly went into his cave. Then 10 minutes later he, for the first time came out of his hiding cave and was roaming around for a bit, at one point he opened his mouth like he kind of yawned. Then minutes later he went back to his cave and has not come out since.


Ive read up on how alot of ball pythons can be troublesum eaters, and this was my biggest fear when i bought it. I did not want to deal with force feeding or none of that stuff. The ball python i had when i was younger would eat a mouse once a week no problem. Did i do something wrong here?

By the way i dont have a humidity gauge (gonna pick one up friday) but the temp gauge reads 84 degrees all the time, sometimes maybe 82.