Hey all! I'm a new BP owner - I got Millie when she was 5 weeks old. She's about 5.25 months now, around 12-13". She ate for F/T for me a few times when I first got her (about once a week). However, recently she has stopped taking food. She'll strike and constrict, but then drop the prey and move on. If I leave the mouse in there, she ignores it and I take it out in the morning. Some days she doesn't even strike and will just stare at it and focus on trying to get out of the tank.

She also is way more active than I pictured a ball python being - she likes to try to scale the glass walls and push her nose against the mesh on the top. She hasn't hurt herself yet - but I am worried about her hurting her skin.

She's in a 10 gallon tank with coconut dirt bedding. She has a water bowl on the cool side with a hide, and a fake fern plant to take up some room. Hot side has a big hide with a smaller one in it that she spends most of her hiding time in. Cool side is around 70-75 (my roommates like to keep our house freezing...), warm just got moved down to around 80-85 (was previously more like 90). I use an UTH and a red 75W bulb. Humidity is 60-85%. I tend not to handle her too much - maybe three or four times in the past two months because I didn't want to stress her more.

I usually use fuzzies as that seems to be the best body-size-to-snake-size ratio - but when she was eating okay she did eat the smallest rat option which I was excited about! She shed in two pieces about two-three weeks ago - the inappetence started about two months ago...

I really don't want to make her an unhealthy weight.. I work at a veterinary hospital - so I'm hopefully bringing a scale home, or bringing her in for a quick five second visit to get a weight on her. What should she weigh a little over five months old?

Here is a photo and video (below) of her that I took earlier today so her BCS can be evaluated!


https://imgur.com/nbrVOLE