Driving me CRAZY!!

[PythonChick]

I got my BP Andromeda back in early August from a show and the guy I got her from said that she's a great eater on f/t. She has REFUSED a meal (every 2 weeks) since I got her. She is not active at ALL(at night) like my male BP. And her sheds are not good either. I have tried forcing her, but to no avail.

What am I to do?? She is very attentive when I take her out. Tounge flicks and such, and is inquisitive, but she is not eating.

I thought that maybe she was sitting on eggs (since she was originally with a male when the guy I bought her from had her) and I have her with my male now. But she doesn't have eggs.

Any ideas!? Am I freaking out too soon? I've even tried putting her in a snake bag with 2 f/t mice for 1.5 days to see if that would help. The mice are warm when she gets them. Eveyone else eats just fine, except her... [img]modules/Forum/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img]

HELP!! [img]modules/Forum/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]
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[najaboy]

Unless she's lost a good deal of weight, I wouldn't worry just yet.

What is her night-time temp getting down to? Often, balls will refuse to feed when it gets down into the seventies.

Also, you may want to give a f/k gerbil a try, if all else fails.

One last thing (for now), force-feeding a ball is an absolute last resort that should only be done if the ball has lost a marked amount of weight. At this point in time, if your snake has not lost a significant amount of weight, please don't try to force-feed again, as it will be counter-productive.

[StaticKaos]

You said it is active when out of the cage with the toung flicking..thats a pretty good sign of good health atleast.. Are you trying to feed live or thawed? When i first got my BP it would not eat frozen, after eating live twice, feeding a thawed out and WARM mice was no problem.. Try that, all i can think of..
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[Stormyva]

What worked for me and my Ball Python....
First I took all of the decorations/climbs out of it's cage to make room for a large shoe box lid to go in the cage. (The shoe box lid is to prevent the ball from ingesting any repti-bark when it eats.)
Next..... I do go a litlle over board here but I have heard so much bad about feeding in a cage so......
I put the shoe box lid in the bottom of a rubbermaid tub that I use for feeding the ball. Then I put the ball and the mouse in the tub on the show box lid and leave them for a while.
If he does not eat then I pick the shoe box lid with snake and mouse and place them in the ball's cage. Then I leave the room, turn off the lights, and typically about an hour later it has eaten the mouse.

The does sound long winded but my bp sometimes can be funny about eating in strange places, eating with the lights on, or with an audience.... oh well this seems to work.

Now if I could just find the trick for my baby childrens python.... it only seems to want to eat every other week and is growing very slowly.


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[JC86]

Here is my humble suggestion.

Do the same thing as before with the snake bag, but just put ONE rodent in there, and brain the rodent. To 'brain' a rodent you use something like the sharp end of a paperclip to make a hole in it's forehead so that brain fluid begins to leak out.


Another thing I found is that a freshly killed rodent is more attractive than a freeze/thawed one.

~Scott
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[Karen]

I dunno about others but when I used to keep balls , I pretty much let em do their own thing and didnt worry too much. Mine constantly went off feed for months at a time and sometimes it wasnt even during winter. Like Naja said, if he's not losing weight I wouldnt worry too much about it. I know live prey is frowned upon in this forum but sometimes ya have to.
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