Is my BP dumb enough to starve herself to death?

[FeathersRuff]

Recently my BP hasn't been eating much or as much as she should be. She's about 1 year old and I've had her for about 5 months now. She has a good habitat, a hide, good humidity and temps stay around the preferable. But she's the pickiest eater and I don't know if shes just picky or if shes being just dumb.

The last time she ate was 3-4 weeks ago. I got tired of holding her food for her because she would take forever to get interested anymore so I would just leave it outside her hide opening. The last time she ate, she dragged in her food and ate it. Since then she hasn't eaten anything. I try to feed her every 2 weeks, because I can't keep wasting mice and I figured if shes not hungry I can just wait. But everytime I lay her food out for her, she just stares at it. Like literally, she'll keep her head inches away from it and stare at it. She'll move around it and not even bother with it. It's just shes completely stupid and not knowing " hey theres food infront of me, I should eat it" and it worries me because she might starve herself to death with her stupidity.

As far as I can tell she has not lost any or much weight. She's still pretty thick for her size. The way I prepare her food is I take a frozen mouse out of the freezer, put it in a bag and let it thaw while I'm at work. When I come home I warm it up with a hair dryer and then place it at the opening of her hide.

I seriously don't know what to do at this point. I feel like she's not gonna eat and starve herself.

[Snakes1]

Don't worry! This is typical ball pythons. One of my boys hasn't eaten in 3 months. And I don't care, he will eat when he wants As long as the weight is ok, they can go a year without food

[melcvt00]

Bps all seem to hit a feeding wall at 1000g. Is that where she is at?

What are you using to measure your heat and humidity, and what is your heat source?

Is she looking like she is getting ready to shed at all (pink belly, scale color getting dull, eyes getting blue)? If she is, bump the humidity up (I like to keep mine at 70-80% during shed, 50% otherwise), and don't handle her at all.

Regardless, I would not handle her at all until she eats.

[cchardwick]

I have 9 ball pythons now, I actually had to pull out my feeding chart to see how many I had LOL. I usually try to start feeding day with frozen thawed, almost none of them will eat. Ball pythons want to hunt, they want live food. I actually used to use live mice but found that many times the mice would bite the snakes and that freaked me out. So I've switched to live rat pups. A rat pup will get bigger than an adult mouse before he even first opens his eyes, it's best to feed when they still have their eyes closed. At that point they are so young they can't really see what is going on and they would never bite the snake, especially if the snake misses on the first pass, that's when the mice get really aggressive. Almost all my ball pythons will turn up their nose at frozen thawed and then a minute later go nuts over a live rat pup.

There's a couple down sides to rat pups though. If they don't eat it then you have to have the mother to keep it alive, not really an option unless you plan on breeding rats. And if you do breed the rats they grow so fast that in a couple weeks that baby rat has his eyes open and is a bit more dangerous to feed and is quickly too big for your ball python to eat. Plus you have to be able to feed live rodents, many people are a bit too squeamish for that. I see baby ball pythons starving in pet stores and I wish I could bring in a live rat pup and put it in the cage to save those baby snakes, but most stores think of rodents as pets and won't even sell them as feeders, so the poor baby snakes just starve.

The best thing to do would be to find someone local that breeds rats. I actually started a system with 9 adult females, I put one per week with the male and one rat has babies every week, giving me a steady supply of all different sizes of rats. Of course that means a lot of space for breeders and babies and feeding and cleaning rats quite often, but I do have lots of food my snakes love to eat and it's way cheaper than buying rodents from someone else.

Another option would be to try fresh killed mice. I set up a cheap CO2 chamber to gas my mice and it works like a charm. Ball pythons seem more eager to eat a fresh killed than a frozen thawed for some reason. Actually if you start with a rat pup it gets them really excited, then they will follow up with just about anything for the second meal (within about 30 minutes or so).

You should post a photo of your snake, some do just go off of food at certain times and that's perfectly normal too.

[PitOnTheProwl]

How much weight has been lost?

Weeks is nothing. I have males that only eat a couple rats a year.

[Oxylepy]

To the topic title: Yes.

It will take about a year to two of poor feeding (once every few months) to bring them to that point, in my experience. Then malnutrition will take them and they will die. You'll notice a drop in weight of about 30% or more if you're keeping track, after this my experience was a held weight of about 70% their maximum weight, and they don't put on more, ultimately they will end up dead as their internal organs fail.

That said, only one of my snakes did that and she did that from about 2 months after I purchased her onwards, so she was about 3 months old when it started, she built up slowly, but then dropped some weight as it got bad, and died.

On the other side, I started breeding my Pastel who I built up for a couple months (food items were all large rats from rodent pro) around November, she stopped eating after I introduced the male, and didn't eat again until last week after I had taken the eggs and a couple babied out of her tub (I let her incubate her eggs). That was about 9 months of not eating. She's still a beast.

[bcr229]

I would re-check her sex and make sure you have a female and not a male.

If your female is choosing to only eat sporadically then either offer a feeder every 3-4 weeks, or offer a smaller feeder than normal every two weeks for a while.

Eventually they do pick back up and start eating again.

[theoremofgoats]

Yes, but if you let her get to that point, that's negligence.

It's common for ball pythons around two years old or so to start winter fasting around September/October through around March/April. That's always more frustrating for the keeper, but as long as they're healthy in the first place, it's not a problem. But she should be eating at this time of the year. Make sure your temperatures are appropriate (90 on the warm side, and mid to upper 70s ambients is what I keep my BPs at). Also make sure her hides are appropriately sized to help her feel secure and that you are not over handling her or stressing her out.

Also, here is a link to an article written by a friend of mine and an experienced ball python keeper on feeding issues: https://reptimes.com/ball-pythons-feeding/. She's also got other articles on ball python care, so feel free to browse around.

[AbsoluteApril]

I usually try to start feeding day with frozen thawed, almost none of them will eat. Ball pythons want to hunt, they want live food.

BPs do just fine on f/t, I'll agree some prefer live but that doesn't mean they can't 'hunt' f/t and take it regularly. All of mine have switched over just fine however (babies through adults).

[blue roses]

I have 2 bps, and they feed totally different. My boy about 1,100g is a pig he rarely refuses, eats a small ft rat every 2 weeks, and my really picky bp girl, 300g, eats a live pup every week, but she is really picky, won't eat ft, won't eat if the food is not white, or hooded. I'm not crazy, itried to feed her some black rats, but no good, so i went the same day and got a white one and wham she ate it in minutes. I now have 3 black rat pets, cause she did this 3 times to us. Can bps be picky? definately. so just adjust according to your pets needs, i'm not crazy about feeding live, but i love this sweet girl so i cater to her wants, its not a big deal with only 2 bps. I would check humidity, and temps, my girl will also stop eating if her temps are off or if humidity goes below 45%. When i say she is picky i wasn't kidding, she went off feed for 8 weeks this winter cause her humidity kept dropping under 45%, so i got a reptifogger and a timer and once the humidity was 50% she started eating and has not missed a meal since.