Last meal 1/19/09 - refusing to eat

[frankykeno]

I agree with Becky. That's a fair lot of food for a ball python, especially a male one. Ball pythons rarely allow themselves to get fat. If they are feeding well or overfeeding sometimes they will simply refuse for awhile. Sort of a self-regulating thing. Remember these are ambush predators. They were not designed by nature to have a constant supply of big meals like we can offer them in captivity. Smaller, regular meals seem to work best in a captive situation.

It could also be the time of the year. This is a male (it has been properly sexed, yes?) whose a good size and sexually mature. He may have his mind on things other than where his next meal is coming from. It's not that uncommon for adult BP's, males or females, to be sporadic feeders during the breeding season.

[judiilana]

This is a male (it has been properly sexed, yes?)

It has not been properly sexed. The way we (think we) know it's a male is that we saw his inner parts when we saw him pooping once, and they were in every way what appeared to be male parts.

Thank you for all the great advice and tips. We'll hold off on offering anything for a couple of weeks, and then offer just one of the 3 rats - no more.

[judiilana]

By the way, AWESOME record keeping you got there! I am VERY impressed!

Thank you!

On my computer I have a bar graph showing the numbers translated into a line graph, and it's cool to see his growth over time, but I couldn't figure out how to paste that into this box. I'm not exactly what you'd call OCD (you should see my DESK! Well, if you could... it's covered with so much crap that nobody can see it) but when it comes to keeping track of numbers etc, I just LOVE it.

[CruelHerbie]

I've only got one ball that hasn't gone back to feeding yet, and I think that is because she has bred previously (before I got her).