When to consider assist feeding when you only have a short history of a bp's care?

[Gemini Pythons]

I would not assist feed her. If she's almost 1000 grams she knows how to eat; this is not a baby that needs a jumpstart.

If she's 900-ish grams at four years old she likely never was a good feeder. I have/had one like this, every few months she would eat once or twice in a row, then she'd stop eating again. Averaged out she was only eating every 5-6 weeks. She's healthy enough, just small.

Thanks for this. It's reassuring to hear, and something I didn't think about. The breeder maintenance feeds, and to this point, all the snakes we've gotten from them grow quite quickly when fed regularly. In fact, they usually end up being voracious eaters. As silly as this sounds, it never occurred to us that she just might be a bad feeder.

We'd already contacted the breeder, and last we spoke, he mentioned some of his snakes died recently (they were necropsied, and nothing was wrong physically or neurologically, and no sickness or infection. We can vouch that they has great husbandry and are incredibly experienced). Their vet said the move was likely too much stress for some of them, and in each case, none of them started eating. That basically put us into a panic with this girl. Thanks for talking me down and the very rational reassurance!