Feeding a ball python
Hi Rodney, like you i am new to this forum but I have been keeping our python for about 4 years and he/she is about five feet long. Our snake only eats frozen mice (which i defrost and warm by putting it in a small freezer bag. This is put into a pint glass of hot water. I make the hot water by putting in a quarter cold then filling up with boiled. After the mouse (super jumbo 30g) has been in for ten minutes or so it is ready - feel through the bag to check it is soft.) it will not eat rats - I had to give these to another snake owner.
Our snake feeds when he is hungary, and ALWAYS in its enclosure. When he is hungary he adopts a hunting position, looking sneekily out of one of his tubes. I then look through the window a couple of times and he adopts to this by coming out of his tube a little more. This means it is time to go and prepare the mouse. After 5 minutes I return with the mouse in the glass warming. I put this down to one side and look through the window again. By now he is usually adopting a position ready to strike, a sort od zigzag. After 10 minutes I check the mouse and if ready i take it out or the bag using a pair of tweezers about 6 inches ( 150 mm) and i pick the muse up by one of his front paws. NEVER at any stage handle the mouse and if you buy them from the shop ask the assistants not to touch them. I then open the door and very slowly present the mouse to the snake. He may strike straight away or he may want to come up to the mouse an sniff it a bit; I reckon it depends on how hungry he is. Then once he is coiled around the mouse I back off and leave him too it. Pythons are very shy and your plan to feed him in a bin troubles me. Getting him out will stress in and a stressed python will want to slither away rather than feed.
I have posted some pictures of our set up. the snake tends to use his sleeping boxes as a toilet which I am quite pleased about becase it saves soiling the enclosure. If he changes boxes it is often because he has soiled one of them. The enclosure needs to be fairly large because they like to slither around but the nest boxes can be tiny, just big eough to coil up in seems to be his favorite. I put some kitchen paper on the floor of the nest box about 5 sheets. I do not bother splitting them just fold them on top of each other. It helps to have a tube into the box, most snakes love going down tubes. The size of mouse I use as a rule is a body length about twice as long as his head.
I never bother to mist the enclosure but there is a large bowl of fresh water in there always which he can bathe in. Our enclosure is split into 3 parts and the largest section has its own central heating radiator with thermostat control valve. This keeps the temperature at exactly 27 Centigrade. There are meshed divides to alow the air to circulate but keep the animals apart. There is a light in the form of a ornate lantern security light which you might find outside by a front door. This is designed for weather so it is great for a vivarium. In the lantern I have a 10 watt low energy bulb which provides enough heat for a temperature gradient, and this works off a time 8 hours on 16 hours off so that the snake gets used to day and night.
Keeping the snake like this has been very successful and we have not had any problems. I would not advise forcing him to feed unless on the advice of a vet, and ther wll be times coming up to shedding when they will not feed and Brumation. Brumation is like a fasting, seasonal changes can bring it on. Since I have used the central heating to warm the enclosure it has not happened but even so there are times when they do not eat for weeks, this is normal python behaviour. Now that I have got used to reading his behaviour he tells me when he is hungry and I feed him. Often they will want to eat a lot more before the commencement of a fasting period. Monty is in perfect condition not fat not lean and a very happy snake.
I hope you find some of this useful. Regards
Roy
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