Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, I am new here and relitively new to ball pythons. We got a small female from a rescue in October. She is great, she eats frozen-never a problem. We wanted another snake because we have enjoyed Shesha so much, one of my customers had a male he wanted to find a new home for. I was under the (wrong) impression that he was also small, but when we went to get him we found out he is full grown 4.5 ft and beautiful. We decided to go for it even though he has been fed live rats. It was time for him to eat when we brought him home. We decided to try a frozen rat and he didnt even lift his head. So, after one more week we bought a live rat yesterday. When we got it home we put the rat carrier in top of his cage and he came right out and seemed VERY interested. My husband "thumped" the rat and we put it in the tank. He didnt go for it...After about 3 minutes the rat shook it off and started running ariund the tank. walking on Naga and he didnt go for it. We removed the rat and thats it. Anyway, the "thumping" is almost to much for me. Has anyone ever known of a snake going back to eating frozen after being raised on live food? This is the route that is more comfortable for me. If anyone has any advise on this I would really appreciate it. I will do whatever is best for Naga, but I am just hopeing... Thanks, Holly

snakes of that size and age are hard to switch over; stuck in their ways. just keep at it and know that it may happen quickly or it may take months or it may never happen at all. last year i switched to frozen 5 snakes older than 3 years old. after 10 months of fasting, one never did switch and i finally gave in and still feed her live mice.

for the ones that did switch, i took thawed rats and let live mice (they were live mice eaters) crawl all over them for a few hours - the mouse smell was what made them hit the heated thawed rat, which i'd wiggle.

good luck. if you get him switched, let us know how you did it.

If he was feeding well on live rats what you can try doing is feeding him live rats off a pair of long hemostats. Once he gets used to receiving his food from the stats - you can do a prekilled rat with a little wiggle and then a thawed and warmed rat. If he doesn't immediately take to eating from the stats - don't give in - just wait him out and try again next week. It's a bit of work with some of the older ones - but I haven't had one yet that I haven't been able to switch over.

Good luck!
-----
Tosha
JET Pythons

Maybe this is a stupid question but I'll take that risk.

I've got a stubborn live feeder. How do you go about feeding live off hemostats? Just grab the scruff? If the rats freak & try to kill the 'stats, don't the snakes grab the wrong part of the rat & risk being bitten?

I'd like to try this technique, but I'd like to do it right. Thanks for any info!

-Tami*

grabbing a rat or a mouse on the sides of the head with hemostats seems (for my skill level anyway) is about as probable as grabbing a fly out of the air with chopsticks... then i imagine the sheer rodent terror of having your head imobilized by metal tongs.

tosha, how do you do this? i'd like to give it a shot with my stubborn gal if its not too difficult and as barbaric as the picture in my mind.

Yeah - if you grab them by the scruff of their neck they will just hang there.
-----
Tosha
JET Pythons