Ball python wont eat

Pythons Ball Pythons
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Hi all.

TLDR: My first question is how long can i leave a thawed mouse in a tupperware w my snake for feeding? 2nd question, any ideas what im doing wrong here and how i can entice this finicky snake

Have a female born in june 24. I got her in sept 24. Ate frozen rat babies once a week w no issues for many months. Until like 1.5 months ago. I was reading online and it said to go up a size for rhe weight of my snake. The place i get them from didnt have rat weeners but had xl mice the same weight and rep said its fine. The snake ate it once, then stopped eating all together for about 6 weeks now. I am very worried for her. She looks good and acts fine but just wont eat. My thaw process is i put the frozen item in a bag and sous vide it for 45 m to an hour at 104 degrees. Then i use my tongs, tap a few times on her tank and coax her out a bit . She seems very interested but just doesnt strike anymore. I try for about 10 minutes but she ends up just climbing around the enclosure w no interest in the food. The enclosure is like 2 feet deep, 4 feet wide , and 3 feet high. I keep it at 85/80, and humidity at 70. At night i have the red heat lamps bc i have a deep bioactive soil w live plants so its the only way i could think of to heat the tank and see what its doing at night. I thought maybe the red light bothered her so i shut those off. No change. I even tried a live rat pup twice. Nothing. I was at a reptile show today and several people there said the enclosure is way too big for such a small snake. So now i put her in a tupperware for a few hours. I just dropped another thawed mouse in there. My first question is how long can i leave it in there? I was worried if i juat dangle the mouse the snake would just get out of the tupperware, so i ipened the top and put the mouse in there and closed it again. 2nd question, any ideas what im doing wrong here and how i can entice this finicky snake ? Sorry for the novel i novel i wrote here.

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For your first question.
You can leave a f/t rodent with your snake preferably for 3 hours. I’d say any longer will run the risk of a bacteria outbreak in the rodent and that might not be good for your snake to ingest if they did eat it. If your snake was readily eating and you were confident that they will indeed eat then its otherwise fine to leave f/t food in their enclosure before you go to bed.

Share a photo of the snake in good lighting and their enclosure, it will help us better assess the situation.

I have a few notes:

•As long as your house does not get below 72°F at night there is no reason to have nighttime heating, your temps look good otherwise.

•Your humidity is too high. You want to aim for 50-60% humidity.

•What is the weight of your snake in grams? Ball Pythons should be eating 10% of their body weight in grams every 10 days.

•This should not be an issue at all as long as you are providing adequate coverage for the snake to hide and feel secure. This is one of the reasons I ask for enclosure photos.

•Removing a BP from their enclosure when they are being picky about food is a big no-no. You are taking them from their home into a new environment with all sorts of new smells that can be overstimulating and possibly stressful, thus taking their attention away from their appetite. Its much better to just leave them in their enclosure when they are ready to eat.

•What time do you offer food for your BP? They are nocturnal so you might have a better chance of getting them to eat at night.

•A thing that may be gross and barbaric for you might work to get your snake to eat. If you have scissors or a sharp knife you don’t mind sacrificing you can use it to snip or cut the skin of the f/t rodent and smear the body fluids around the food a bit and really get that scent out, it may be able to entice the snake. It might also aid in digestion as a bonus, but is not needed outside of this situation.

•One more thing, if your BP has been eating rats its whole life they may not want mice as a meal. They can tell the difference and they do absolutely have their preferences. I’d try to see if there might be another source you can get food items from, I get all of my f/t rodents from Rodentpro.com whenever I don’t have enough frozen stock from my own rodent colony production.

Thats all I can really cover without more info. If you have anything else you can share that ypu think might help please feel free!

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Ty so much for taking the time to read and reply. Some answers to your questions:

  • i initially had the humidity at 55 and she had 2 bad sheds. Advice goven to me at the time was raise to 70. I can bring it back down to 60 to see if it helps.

  • geez i really cant remember now but i want to say she was something like 365grams

  • sooo i just went in there to turn on the red light and take a pic bc Obv its night time right now. I peeked in the tupperware , i couldnt see so well but it looks like it indeed took the baby mouse!!! I will check and confirm tomorrow. I have 2 logs and some moss it buries under for coverage and leaf litte of course. I just bought 2 more cork bark logs today

  • i put her in a tupperware and kept that tupperware in the tank. I feed her at peak activity at night which is usually around 10pm. The lights go out at 7.

  • i will switch back to rats , i hope i can get thru the 20 or so xl mice i have tho!

I will confirm tomorrow if the mouse is eaten. Ty again for the reply

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Bring a live rat into the picture just to get things going or get them scented with mice. Thus just a phase change but you definately need to go to rats. Mice cannot provide the nutrition that a growing ball python needs. Certainly you can restrict their groth by continuing mice but they will always be small. Like the size of a 1year old and never get any bigger. You really need to go to rats right now, today right now.

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I was wondering why people were pushing rats over mice. In my mind i figured meat is meat. If a weener rat is 35g and an xl mouse is 35 grams that would be the same? Easy enough to switch back to rats . Once a week is still a good schedule ?

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First off, please don’t sous vide your feeders. Thaw in hot water until thawed & warmed, shouldn’t take longer than 5-10 minutes. When you have them at that temperature for that period of time, you’re increasing the chance of bacterial growth. You can leave the rodent in overnight. They’ll either eat it or they won’t, but it’s not going to hurt anything to do so. Remove in the morning if it hasn’t been eaten. I suggest you ditch the red light. You’re messing with the snake’s ability to see properly and her day/night cycle. Lights off at night, use a DHP if you need heat.

I really suggest you stop switching so many things around, you’re likely causing her more stress. Not all advice is necessarily good advice. If she was eating fine until you switched to mice, that is likely your issue. Mice do not have the same scent nor nutritional value as rats. Stop putting her in the tupperware and go back to how things were, and give her time. Weigh her regularly to make sure she’s not losing any significant amount of weight, but otherwise just keep trying every week or two.

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Mice are all fat, rats are all muscle simple and true. Certainly mice are an acceptable starter, but need to move to rats asap. There are people that keep trying to feed larger mice but its a losing battle. Some neurological issues point to mouse fat. In Africa ball python hatchlings eat rats, whether they raid a nest or happen upon them. This is the reason they grow quickly to accept prey that is mobile and easily hunted by a snake. Treat your snake the same, a combination of modern and reality. Those instincts are still in that python brain and will respond well. If you need to scent the rats with mouse bedding go ahead and I think you will see a miraculous change.

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I do agree that in most circumstances rats are the more ideal feeder for captive ball pythons, but I’m not sure I fully agree with the statement below. Do you happen to have any resources that support this?

According to a USDA study on the nutrient composition of whole vertebrate prey fed in zoos, at most stages of life rats have a higher percentage of fat than mice. At most stages of life, rats do indeed have a higher protein content than mice too though. This is also supported by the guaranteed analysis by one of the large rodent feeder producers that opts to provide this type of information.

I think rats are generally preferred over mice for ball pythons due to the sheer size difference available. Once the snake starts reaching a greater size, feeding appropriately sized rats requires less feeder animals less often to meet the animal’s caloric needs.

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Having the ambient humidity above 60% has an increased risk for respiratory issues.

A way to battle the bad sheds is to add humid hides into the enclosure, so the ambient humidity can still remain at an adequate level while having isolated spots of higher humidity whenever the snake goes into blue.

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It would be best if you can weigh her again, if you don’t have a gram scale I’m sure you could find a pretty decent one on Amazon for a reasonable price.

When was the last time she was weighed? At 11 months old and 365 grams sounds small for a female BP. This is why I ask for pictures of the snake to make sure it looks healthy.

As for your schedule, if and only if she is still around that weight you’ll want to feed her 35-45 gram rats every 10 days.

10% body weight every 10 days.

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I have never heard of this? What does sous vide mean?

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Sous vide is a cooking method in which you vacuum seal meat in a bag and cook it in water kept at a specific temperature, usually using a device known as an immersion circulator.

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Totally agree with this statement! The feeder bill is a tad less too……

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Oh ok! Thanks Jess! I learned something new today! But that sounds like a gross way to prepare a feeder!!! :nauseated_face:

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It used to be a high end french cooking technique where u seal food in a bag and put it in a water bath at a specific temp. Used to be u would have to buy a 1000$ lab immersion circulator. Nownu can get it for like 100$. Fantastic way to cook some things . Not so great for others. If you have a party and want to make 10 steaks , u literally set it and forget it. Anyway someone on here said not to do it. Maybe ill increase the temp and shorten the time to reduce chance of spoiling the rat

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Just weighed her, shes 423 grams

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Ok, she should be eating 45-50 gram rats every 10 days then.

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You can just submerge the rodent (in a bag if you want to keep it dry) in hot water from the tap. Keep in mind that you don’t want to cook the rodent, you just want to warm it to roughly mammalian body temperature. Takes about 10 minutes in hot tap water for me to get a large mouse or small rat to about 90F. You can refresh the hot water and leave it for a few more minutes if your snake needs it a bit warmer (my snakes are garbage disposals and would probably eat their rodents still frozen if I let them, so I don’t bother). But that’s really all the time it needs to take. A large rat still only takes me about 20 minutes to warm up.

Granted, since you have the fancy gadget, I totally understand wanting to use it at every opportunity, and if you can use the immersion circulator to warm the rodent more quickly without cooking it, then I think that’s fine.

As for your original problem, I suspect the initial issue was that she was used to rats and you gave her a mouse. Some snakes don’t care and will readily switch back and forth between prey types, but others (including many ball pythons) are less willing to accept a prey item that smells unfamiliar. Then I think your well-intentioned efforts to troubleshoot by changing a bunch of stuff ended up causing her some stress and made her not want to eat. Change can be stressful for snakes. You’ve already received some great advice: switch back to rats, feed in the enclosure, ditch the red light. I’d also recommend keeping handling to a minimum until she’s eaten for you at least two or three times in a row, just to ensure her stress levels stay low.

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