BPs at work

[flyingsqueak]

I work at one of those "evil chain pet stores", but over all everyone in the petcare department including the manager is very devoted to the animals and doing whatever is necessary for their care--regardless of corporate policy and even giving the customer what they want. The husbandry isn't absolutely perfect, but it's not bad either. The tanks are a little overcrowded, but not to an extreme degree, there are never more than three animals in one enclosure (other than the birds, then it's never more than six and their cages are huge).

All of the reptiles are really healthy, eat well, and seem appropriately active--except for the ball pythons. We have three BPs right now, one that came in in January and two that came in the beginning of June. The one from January is probably about 7 or 8 months old and the ones from June are probably only 2 or 3 months old. They are all the same size . Right now all three have some stuck shed; luckily all of their eyecaps are clear, but that has to be uncomfortable. One of them has been stuck for at least three weeks (most of it is off now, but there are still a few patches). None of them eat on their own, they are all assist fed. I bet that if they were left a few weeks without being assist fed that they would eventually eat on their own, but they are all too skinny to risk doing that. They get assist fed two pinkie mice once a week. Their temperature is good, and their humidity may be a little high most of the time, but it's almost never too low since I got there (I can get exact numbers tomorrow). I bought a BP a little over a month ago and he was only 65grams. These three are all smaller than he was.

I'm new at the pet store, so I can't make big changes, but I can do small things. They consider me very knowledgeable about reptiles (most of them know a ton about fish, birds, and turtles, but not a ton about snakes and lizards beyond the corporate care guides--other than that the care guides are totally wrong about humidity). I could try assist feeding fuzzies instead of pinkies, but I couldn't switch it to every four/five days rather than every week or let them fast until they decide to eat on their own. I could probably get them to the vet or at the least get fecal samples. The manager never hesitates to let animals go to the vet, the only problem is that the vet always claims to have no time for store animals, so it may take a while.

I've been told that all of the BPs that this store ever gets never eat on their own. I'm inclined to believe that the problem comes from the supplier rather than the store because of the level of devotion and care all of the petcare employees are showing, the husbandry is better than the corporate care guides, and all of the other animals (including five colubrids and a sand boa) are very healthy and eating perfectly.

What should I do? An 8 month old ball python should be much larger than this, I'm really worried about him