I broke down and fed live mice to my Ball

[angllady2]

While it is possible for a ball to suddenly refuse f/t after a single feeding of live, it doesn't happen every time.

The main thing about fasting is weight. The key is to know the weight of your snake or snakes. When one or more fasts, keep an eye on the weight. Unless the snake looses more than 10 - 15% of it's body weight, your best bet is to just wait out the fast, as difficult as it is.

I have had an adult female import go 18 months without eating. She only lost about 10% of her body weight during that time.

In your situation, I would now wait at least 2 weeks before offing food again. Try to continue offering in his cage, because moving a fasting snake can frequently cause more problems than it solves. Make sure you are offering his food in an appealing way. Make sure it's well thawed, warm and dry, and make sure to really heat the head well, to produce a good heat signature for him to lock on to. I find frequently in speaking with people having problems with f/t, they seldom heat the prey item sufficiently to encourage a quick feeding response. In fact, many people seem to think you only need to drop a thawed item into the cage and wait. Which in my experience rarely works, since ball pythons see and hunt in heat. Anyway, if he refuses to eat, wait another two weeks and try again.

Something else I have found from personal experience, is that some ball pythons seem to sense when you are tensed up and worried about them eating. It sounds weird I know, but I really think that some of them pick up on your tension and anxiety. Kind of like a dog or cat can. If you are all keyed up and worried, " Is he/she going to eat this time? How long has it been since he ate? What do I do if he doesn't eat? He's not going to eat, I just know he's not the little brat!" they pick up on that and will deliberately not eat because of it. So try to keep nonchalant about it. If he eats he eats, if he doesn't, so what? You never know, it might help.

I wish you all the best, but don't give up on f/t just yet.

Gale