Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone, I bought a ball python about two months ago, she is captive hatched, but anyways, she has eaten everytime I have feed her, and one time I just left a f/t in there and she ate it I tried again and no go, her last meal was three fuzzies (four days ago, I usually only give her two), (I usually feed her every five days) Well I just fed her a f/t by moving it in front of her I tried again with another and she did not eat it. My question is do I wait another five days before I feed her again, or do I buy some live fuzzies to let her eat tommorow. And if I do wait the five days, do I feed her f/t or live, I want to get her on f/t for obvious reasons, but I dont want her to suffer or start to be a problem.
Thank you for your responses

Rott - good taste in dogs and snakes, but I don't think that you need to feed as often as you are feeding. Once a week to every 10 days is fine, IMO. Let me see if I can get the timeline straight:

Four days ago - June 26th - you fed your (juvenile?) ball python that's never refused a meal before an extra fuzzy (rat?)

Today - June 30th - you fed her a frozen/thawed (fuzzy rat?), tried another, and she refused the second one.

Had she even defecated the remains of the feeding on the 26th?

eating anything is better than eating nothing, especially as far as a ball python eating f/t versus live. I think that you don't need to feed nearly as often as you do, and that eating just one f/t fuzzy rat is fine depending on the size/age of your bp. Please do a little reading of caresheets and books by respected breeders and if you still have any questions, hopefully someone around here will be kind enough to reply - which isn't often to a newbie's post. Hope that answers your questions for now. -Whit

1) AFAIK, for a ball waiting a few weeks in between eating is normal, especially as they get older. That doesn't help, but at least you can rest assured that it's not going to die on yoru.

2) Are you feeding it big enough prey? I have a king that won't eat pinkies anymore; I guess it's just too small to be considered food or something. My little ball is, well, a LITTLE ball, and she's already eating rat pups comfortably. Balls can swallow at least 1.5 times their largest diameter comfortably, and it might help to offer it something larger, if it's too small right now.

3) Looking into the future, when your ball will have to start eating rats, I would get a live rat pup now, and work towards f/t rats instead of mice. Rats aren't as appetizing as mice to them, and a live one might get it going.

4) As for why it's not eating f/t when it was, there's no way to tell for sure. Maybe something's changed recently, maybe it's growing into a finicky eater, maybe the prey is too small, maybe something's stressing her out, maybe the temps are off, etc. I'm no expert, but if I was in your situation, I'd wait about a week, get a live rat pup, and see what happens from there. In the meantime, I'd make sure everything was good as far as temps, humidity, etc., and just leave her alone for a little bit.

...Good info in the first 2 posts. The snake won't suffer by waiting it out. One of the tricks for using f/t is to warm up the food item (after its thawed) by placing it in a baggy and submerging it in hot (not boiling) water for several minutes, then quickly offer the food item off of forceps (I use 18" hemos), in subdued light. You kind of jerk the food item slightly to simulate live food. After the snake has eaten several of these warmed f/t food items you can skip the warming up. You have to remember that BP's aren't the smartest of all creatures and it takes some conditioning to get some to consistently eat f/t. SJM