Shy Eater Help?

[Renigaed]

I have a 455g male ball python who stopped eating frozen thawed rats completely. I tried feeding him prekilled rats for a while but he still wasn't interested. I started feeding him live and he took to them pretty well. He's eating 40-50g rats and I'm afraid to feed him any bigger because he's a VERY shy eater. He will wait for the rat to be one inch a way from him face, and if it turns to face him or bumps his nose, he freaks out and hides. A lot of times I have to hold the rat still by the tail with tongs in front of him so he'll take it. When I fed him yesterday he started at the rat for 10 minutes and then started moving up to it and then he sniffed it and was touching it with his nose but he wouldn't grab it. Does anyone know how I can get him to be more of an aggressive feeder? It's hard right now because I get really bad anxiety when I feed him a 50g rat and it comes up to his face and he doesn't strike it. Any ideas would be great. He eats every 5-7 days by the way.

[redshepherd]

40~50 grams is just fine for his size.

I wouldn't keep feeding him live, or else he might get stuck on live and really not take f/t in the future. He's already up to the size where some males go off feed for a few weeks, or even months. As long as he's of nice chunky body condition and not losing weight, don't worry about it- just offer him a f/t rat once every 7~10 days (or even longer) and wait him out.

If you have a scale, keep track of his weight to make you feel better! Almost all sub-adult~adult ball pythons go off feed and us keepers just have to offer every week or two and wait until they start eating again.

(I really insist to stop feeding live just to make him eat LOL! Having a snake stuck on live food is no fun.)

The other possibility is your temps are off, so re-check your temps.

To make you feel better, my adult male weighing about 1100g went off feed from November~February I just offered once every 2 weeks until he started taking again.

[bcr229]

This is about when I put my males on a 10-14 day feeding schedule. Your boy is letting you know that his growth is slowing down and he doesn't need to eat as often.

[Renigaed]

All right thanks for the help guys, I really appreciate it. And yeah he went off feed for about a month during the winter, but he's been better. I will definitely work on getting him back on f/t. And the temps should be fine, cool side is 78-80 and warm side is 85 with a hot spot of 90.