Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My Ball Python Jake has suddenly decided, after 2 1/2 years of eating outside his enclosure in a seperate feeding box, that he will only accept dead prey left in his cage. I figured this out by accident. I usually buy live and whack them for Jake. He went on his first winter fast this year, and I was whacking rats and putting the uneaten carcasses in my freezer. I'd defrost it and offer again, and if he refused it I'd throw it away and start the whole process all over again. We did this all winter. I'd give him a small live mouse occasionally because I was worried about him not eating. After taking a few mice with no hesitation, I went back to rats. No go. Well, it's March, and I got tired of doing this. The last time he refused his rat, I tossed it into the cage with him in disgust. Lo and behold!! It was suddenly the most interesting dead rat in the universe! Snarf, gone. OK, tried again this week. Took him out, put him in the box, whacked the rat, tossed it in. Nothing. Left them there for 1 hour. Nothing. FINE!! Put the fat rat-ba$tard back in his cage and threw in the med rat. Just looked, gone.
Now, what would cause a young adult BP to suddenly change eating habits like this? Any ideas? Any similar stories?

btw:I'm just thrilled he's eating again! Darn winter fasts....
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1.1 Ball Python 0.0.1 corn snake 1.0 Bearded Dragon
0.0.2 fish 1.2 cats 3.1 kids 1.0 husband and now...
0.0.1 Pink Zebra Beauty Tarantula
2.0 Solomon Island Boas

Hi

I have a BP also who is roughly the same age as yours - 2 1/2 years approx.

I have had something similar but not identicacle happen of late. I would always feed her by dangling the pre-killed food item into her cage (I use newspaper for a substrate) using forceps and 9 times out of 10 she would take it without any hassle. On the odd occassion she did not take the food I would leave it in a suitable place in the cage for a short time but she NEVER took it.

The past 3 times she has fed she has shown no interest whatsoever whilst I have been present dangling the food item but each time I have left the food in the cage, I have come back an hour or two later to find her pigging out. I wondered if maybe I was becoming too complacent - expecting her too eat every time and therefore maybe sub-consciously moving about faster than usual or something and freaking her out a bit.

The bottom line is that I do not know what could cause this. I have only kept Royals for a year so am not too experienced. Could it be something to do with the age (as I say mine is about the same age? maybe their habits can change as they reach maturity and they become more choosy - personally I would have thought it was the opposite and they would become more accustomed to us being present during feeding as they get older - I don't really know. I assume that if the snake was ill or stressed it would not take the food item at all whether I am there or not but that is just a guess really.

Maybe some of the longer term keepers on the forum may know the reason?

Kind regards
Ben Sambrook