Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have a big, beautiful ball python that's almost a year and a half old. My problem is that recently - i'd guess about the last month or so - she's been refusing F/T rats and only eating live. Prior to this she had never refused a meal.

When i first got her, i fed her live mice for the first 2 meals and then quickly got her switched to F/T with the occasional live rat pup. I prefer the F/T because she's getting to the size where she's eating rats that are big enough that i fear they could hurt her if they were live and i'm too slow to protect her or get momentarily distracted while feeding her. I thought about this when i decided to try to get her on F/T early on.

She's refused three F/T medium rats (i tried heating them with water, under a heat lamp, i tried a little warmer, a little cooler) and then gone on to quickly gobble down live rats.

Basically, im wondering if anybody has experienced something similar, and was it possible to get their ball "switched back" to accepting F/T? Or should i just get used to PreKilling and stop wasting my time/money/freezer-space on frozen rats?

Thanks,
Tony
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0.1 Ball Python (Bea)
1.1 Corn - Male Butter (Butters), Female Normal (Rusty)
1.0 Rosy (Pumpkin)
1.1 Checkered Garter (Cracker & Tweek)

It is up to you on how you want to procede. I feed some of my balls frozen thawed and some live. The one that will not take or will only sometimes take frozen thawed, I feed live. The ones that aways take frozen thawed, I feed frozen thawed. I always feed small or small-medium rats. I would rather feed 2 live small rats then one medium. I don't leave the rats in the tubs for longer than 30 min at a time. If the ball has not eaten within this time, I take the live out, and they wait until the next feeding time. This works well for me. Make sure your live rats are not hungry, when you put then into the cage with the snake. Hope this helps.

It might be that occasionally feeding her a live rat pup made her more likely to continue eating only live.

You might try just not feeding her a live when she next refuses frozen. It could be that now she's at a weight where she feels she can afford to be picky, and since a live rat is likely to come after a F/T one, she can just wait. Give it a couple weeks only offering frozen - she might pick them back up if she's hungrier.

You can also try prekilling every meal, and once she takes that every time, try frozen again. I don't remember if you said - do you wiggle the prey when you offer F/T? You could try using tongs to wiggle the rat a little so that it looks alive. Sometimes that's all it takes.

Like the previous response said, make sure the rats are well fed before you put the live one(s) in with the snake, and just keep an eye on them. I personally don't leave live prey in for more than 15 minutes - I know if my snakes haven't eaten the prey by then, they're not going to.
A tip on feeding the rats - give 'em yellow squash, kale, zuccini (however that's spelled), and/or some carrots. It's a nice healthy meal for them to have in their stomachs when the snake munches 'em.

Good luck!

~jenny
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"Polysyllabism in no way insures that what you're saying is actually worth being heard." - Blake (an e-friend of mine)

"I have never made but one prayer to god, a very short one: "O lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And he granted it." - Voltaire

Thanks for all the suggestions. I hadn't thought about the hair dryer technique. "gut loading" the rat on veggies also sounds like a pretty good idea - extra vitamins (i guess) and the rat might be less like to bite.

As far as wiggling the F/T - yes, i use long tongs to move the rat around. i pull it by it's tale, i push it by it's tale so that it looks like it's "walking" and no luck.

As far as the live food. I've never had to leave live food in there for more than 60 seconds. I put her in the tub, put the rat on the other side and either wait for her to smell the rat, or the stupid rat usually just walks right into my snake, and it's over.

I'm going to hold off on offering live food after she refuses F/T and see how stubborn she is.

Thanks again for all the help,
Tony
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0.1 Ball Python (Bea)
1.1 Corn - Male Butter (Butters), Female Normal (Rusty)
1.0 Rosy (Pumpkin)
1.1 Checkered Garter (Cracker & Tweek)

I got my first ball when I was five, and my mom took care of raising the rodents for food and such. She says she actually wrote an article for a reptile magazine on the benefits of "gut loading" mice/rats and feeding them a healthy diet prior to being eaten. I'll have to see if I can get her to dig that article up to share.

My collection is relatively small, but my snakes have all grown quickly and are very robust and healthy. My yearling female is at the 1000 gram mark and after a few weeks of not eating has picked it up again.

Good luck! Hopefully being a little hungrier will help.

~jenny
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"Polysyllabism in no way insures that what you're saying is actually worth being heard." - Blake (an e-friend of mine)

"I have never made but one prayer to god, a very short one: "O lord, make my enemies ridiculous." And he granted it." - Voltaire

Good Luck.

they eat or they don't.....if you use frozen they have to eat frozen......

.......try a hair dryer......after they are thawed.

........use smaller live rats and you won't have to worry?...

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.....too many critters.....
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I have one girl that was a pain to switch over - tho she will go for long periods feeding aggressively on f/t, she continually insists on going back to live. At this point I've made it very clear to her that if she is not going to eat f/t then she doesn't eat - sometimes she'll go a month or more - and I can tell she is hungry - but she is stubborn - so am I - when she is really ready to eat - she'll take the f/t.
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Tosha
JET Pythons

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