I have a little girl from a clutch born 8/11 and she still has yet to take any meals for me. The clutch was an odd one as you can see by this thread: http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...699-Odd-clutch. One of the babies had a slight kink in her neck but she (and the rest of her sisters) is eating with a little help (assist feeding but they coil and eat it as soon as you open their mouth). However, the one I'm having issues with looks fine from the outside but I'm really starting to wonder if there is something wrong internally.

Live pinky and fuzzy rats didn't work. I even tried a live asf with no luck. Assist feedings have failed so far as well. It is really hard to describe what I'm seeing but the best way to describe it is she sometimes coils it and then she proceeds to try and eat it but she doesn't seem to use her neck muscles to "move it along" like I see the others do. She gets the rat down to about the arms and then starts to struggle from there. She tries pushing it against her body and the tub and eventually she'll spit it back out. The struggling can go on for a long period of time since she seems to "back out" of it up to the head and then try again to eat it. She seems to REALLY want to eat it but it's like something is preventing it from moving any farther (basically where her neck begins). I did take a video of it but it's too long to upload I guess. The last attempt at feeding was a fuzzy rat. For the sake of trying I even removed the arms (of course it was a f/t rat) thinking that maybe she's picky and the arms are irritating her to move along any farther. After that failed (still stopped at the same spot and started struggling), I'm left wondering if it's a physical problem or blockage in there like a narrowed esophagus or maybe even something genetically off about this clutch (kinks, odd patterns/colors and the whole clutch was female as well as the breeding being Normal x Mojave and getting no mojo babies).

I'm going to get the smallest pinky I can tomorrow and try again to see if maybe it's just that she can't handle fuzzies yet but none of her clutchmates have issues getting them down. However, if that doesn't work we have planned to take her to the vet next week. I had someone local say I could just freeze her and even offered to freeze her for me but I'm not ready to give up just yet (I don't really agree with this form of euthanasia anyway although I know some breeders do). With that being said, another person mentioned that I could try syringe feeding her with some Hills Science Diet a/d canned cat food. Now, I'm not usually one to take people at their word on things like that but I have heard about this before only I believe it was Marshall's ferret food that was ground up and mixed with water. I've also heard of tube feedings. Is this something I could try? Also, has anyone had issues similar to this and if so, what was the cause? Thanks for any replies I really feel at this point I've done all I can possibly do other than these 2 possibilities.

Here are some pics of her trying to eat and how far in before it stops: