Constricting but not eating?

I have a year and a half old female who is about 1300 grams. She never hit her 1000g wall and never refused a meal for me since she was a hatchling. The past 3 weeks I have fed her 2 ft medium rats and 1 live pup and the same thing happens. She seems super interested, literally comes out of her tub for food, grabs the rat instantly but once she “kills” the ft or kills the live she just leaves it and doesn’t eat? Does anyone have any ideas to why she’s doing this? Could she have possibly just hit her 1000g wall at 1300g?

What are your temps and humidity? Can we have a recent picture of the snake?

My hot spot is 90 and my room sits 79-80. The humidity is also 50-60%

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It sounds like a normal fast. According to the chart below the snake would be around very overweight. Ideally a snake will be around good, or for breeders, maybe overweight. Unless the snake starts losing a lot of weight or the body condition is underweight then try offering food every 10-14 days.

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I love this chart because it so clearly teaches the right body type :+1:

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I always see it passed around and I thought it would be very useful here.

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Wow I guess most of my breeder females are obese according to your chart :joy:

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Most captive ball pythons that are fed weekly are obese or the next thing to it.

Some snakes will constrict and leave prey items they consider too large. I have a female who’s done that her entire life if the rat is even a tiny bit larger than she prefers.

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A sad amount of snakes in the hobby in general are obese. Maybe this is the snake saying it needs a diet by not eating the rodents. Most females that size I hear are fed small rats, so mediums are a rather large meal. Try to give her a break from feeding attempts for a month and see if that helps. I believe @trnreptiles breeds her girls without them having a huge amount of extra weight on them and does fine, and only feeds her breeder females smalls as well.

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I feed my girls all small rats on a weekly basis, a couple I go biweekly because they have a tendency to be overweight. Sometimes a few females will go off food for a bit on their own, then resume feeding a few weeks later. I feel they do self-regulate to an extent.

With breeding females that I know are developing follicles, I will increase this feeding a bit to 2 smalls per week — but I’ll still sometimes skip the extras on some weeks and they’ve done fine.

This is one of my females I’ve had to cut back feeding with for reference, she has similarly never hit a 1000 gram wall, always been a voracious eater and is a whopping 1700 grams. She’s definitely looking a bit better from before, but there’s still quite a bit to go before she’s a healthier weight!

April 16th

June 22nd

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She is still a beautiful snake though. She will be larger then normal, right, in terms of length/weight?

I’m unsure of what you’re asking — she’s either a late 2018 or early 2019 baby, I wasn’t given a specific birth date on her but she was a little over 200 grams when I first got her back in early 2019.

I’ve never had her refuse food, at least not that I can remember off the top of my head.

Even after getting bit in the face by a rat once (I made the mistake of buying feeders from the local chain pet store instead of a breeder, they were super nasty in terms of temperament. She healed perfectly fine of course, and still ate at the next scheduled feeding!)

Sorry I just reread my post, and what I was trying to say. I see some breeders have huge females that are +3000 grams, do you ever see her getting there?

She might! I’m not sure though, we’ll just have to see haha.

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