Two Questions, please help.

[coreyl]

Hi,
I really need advice. I have two ball pythons. A normal female het hypo, and a male Mojave Hypo. My female is an adult, 4 years old, about 3 and a half feet long, and around 1300 grams. I have her in a tank I just finished building. It's a 55 gallon tank set on its side with plexiglass doors in the front, I'll attach a picture. I have a hide on the cool side, a hide on the warm side, and a pond in the middle. The heat pad and humidifier are hooked up to a thermostat/hygrostat combo. The humidity was too high so I have a computer fan attached to the outside that sucks air out of the tank. The humidity stays around 65% and the ambient temperature is 80 degrees.

Now, my question is, why does she bite me every time I try to take her out and hold her? And it's not just a strike. She literally grabs on to my hand and wraps around my arm. There's no way she's hungry. I feed her a frozen/thawed small-medium sized rat every week. Unless she needs more than that, but I don't think she could handle two of them. She ate two days ago and I tried to take her out today and she instantly bit the back of my hand and tried squeezing me. Is there anything I can do to stop this?

My second question is about my male. I bought him from TSK a little over a month ago maybe two months. He's a little under a year old and I can't get him to eat anything but rat pinkies, and it takes a lot for him to eat those. I had to leave him in a bin overnight with them. I tried feeding him a rat pup and he wouldn't take it. His temp and humidity are in the right range as well. Are there any tricks I can use to get him to eat?

[BCS]

For a 4 year old, once week is definitely enough. As for the wrapping, she seems to have a good feeding response. Maybe this is the time to start hook training. Touching your female with the hook first and move her head out of the way where you can comfortably grab the middle of her body without risk of her biting you.

Do you feed in the enclosure or out of the enclosure for both your male and female?Do you feed live or F/T? How big in grams is your male?

[John1982]

If she's latching on and wrapping up it is a feeding response. Pictures of your female are worth 1000 words if you want opinions on her size.

As for the male, more info would help. Are you feeding live or dead? Have you tried offering food in his enclosure?

[coreyl]

Unfortunately this is my first post so I can't add attachments yet. I did post a picture in my gallery though. It's not the best picture in the world, but I'm not looking forward to taking her out again to get a decent one. I generally take them out and feed them both frozen thawed rats. I have them on reptibark bedding and I don't want them to ingest the substrate so I place them in a separate container. The male is 277 grams.

[BCS]

Rat pups are probably a good size for a 277g snake. Also, feeding outside of the tank (IMO) seems to cause more issues. Others will say differently but I am speaking from my experience and stories that friends or other breeders have told me. Reptibark is a little heavy to get stuck on prey. There is no reason to worry about the substrate being digested. Even so, it wont hurt them. It can stress snakes out, especially ball pythons who seem to be more shy then other species of snakes. If I were you, try feeding their enclosure from now on. You may see a very big difference.

[coreyl]

That's what I figured, but he wouldn't eat it, he didn't seem interested at all. I will definitely try feeding them in their tanks this weekend. Thanks for the advice!

[Albert Clark]

For the female I think she is associating being taken out of her enclosure as "time to eat". Are you sure you don't have the scent of prey on your hands? It's really ok to feed them in their enclosure. For the male, same thing feed in the enclosure and don't offer anything except rat pups to him until he accepts them. It's going to be a process.

[BoiseBallz]

Agree with John and Albert. Defensive/leave-me-the-f-alone strikes are quick hits with quick withdrawl - no holding on with their mouth and no throwing coils. What you are describing is a feeding response.
Guess what is about the same size as a small/medium rat? Your hand. Rats normal body temps are around 100°. Pretty close to 98.6°, Huh? To add insult to injury, BPs don't see particularly well. I think you see where I'm going with this. Your girl is trying to eat you.

So, why doesn't your other snake (or most other people's snakes) do this? Most BPs are more naturally cautious before indiscriminately trying to eat something, preferring to confirm a prey item before striking, but when a BP lives comfortably in captivity with regular feedings, they can become so secure with their situation that they become less cautious/fearful about potential threats and can really come to associate cage opening with feeding time. A 4 yr old is more likely to be like this than a 1 yr old. Also, some BPs are just better/more aggressive feeders. I have a Spotnose Pinstripe male that is looking to eat pretty much every time I open his tub. If I just opened his tub and tried to pick him up without a plan, there is no doubt in my mind that he would do to me what your girl has done to you.

When I open his tub, he immediately comes forward and raises his head up looking for mom-noms. I just carefully reach over and around his head and pick him up. The instant my hand makes contact with him, he goes into 'Oh, OK. Time to be picked up. Don't munch on human' mode. With the way your set up is described, you may not be able to do that. There are several things you can try. Hook training, as already mentioned; using a handling glove; gently laying a paper towel or cloth over her head; or using one hand out of range to focus the attention of her head while using the other hand to pick her up (this obviously requires more experience and leaves you more exposed). You could also consider switching her to a tub which allows you to come at her from above instead of from the front.

As for your other snake, I believe TSK feeds live (many big breeders do). I have one snake from them, and I seem to remember that they do, but it's been a while. I convert all of my snakes to F/T - which is sometimes easy and, sometimes difficult. She was easy, so I may be remembering incorrectly as to whether or not they feed live. You may want to check with them.

If they do feed live, You may find it easier to go with live for that particular snake, and even if you want to convert, you may want to try to feed live for one or two feedings before converting. Sometimes this will make conversion much easier.

[coreyl]

I just don't want him to lose too much weight. I'm hoping to eventually breed them so having him starve himself to death is not part of the plan haha. I'm hoping that feeding them in their tanks will help out.

Would live feeding be better for my female since her feeding response is so great? I haven't tried live feedings with her. I've had ball pythons previously and I fed them live since I was young and thought it was cool, I have since realized the dangers associated with live feeding and I've fed frozen since then. But perhaps a live feeding will stimulate her more?

The first time I asked TSK they said the fed him live, but the second they said frozen, so I'm not sure. He ate pinkies frozen/thawed though. I may start trying live rat pups since they can't hurt him if I leave them in overnight with him since that's what it generally takes from him to eat.

[KitaCat]

I don't think there's any reason to offer your female live; most of the time when someone switches to live, it's because of a lack of feeding response.

No reason to add the extra risk of live feeding when she's eating good on f/t.