Tips on offering F/T mice to a python?

I tried feeding my new ball python, and he didn't go for it. He ended up pooping later yesterday, so I figured it was safe to assume he had eaten recently before I got him. He's 25" long.

Congrats on the new ball. We have 1 also who just came off his winter hunger strike. How much do you know about balls? They can be notorious picky eaters. Loki didn't eat since october/november then on saturday he are 4 young gerbils (their preferred food in the wild) and likely would have eaten more but I was afraid he' d regurg so we stopped there. At 25 inches loki wouldn't easy f/t prey. It was live or nothing and he is still that way. Hrs only ever eaten f/t like 3 times. A few tricks the pro at the pet shop gave us was try putting the snake and the f/t mouse in a paper lunch bag over night to eat. That was how they fed their snakes since they kept a few bps in the same viv. That way they knew who ate what. He could still be setting in also. Another thing is some snakes prefer "ripe" prey. It was suggested to offer f/t if not eaten refreeze and try again the next day with the sam mouse. It'll be more stinky for him and maybe more enticing. Loki never went for that. You could offer liv e prey too of course. If you're monitoring feeding your snake should be fine. Just make sure the mouse doesn't jump all over the bp or it could put him off food more. You can try gerbils. They're like bp crack and very unusual for a bp to turn down (as evidence from lokis recent pig out : ). We breed our own as the last mice from the pet shop were sickly and died from fur mites. Killed our whole breeding colony by introducing 2 friggin mice... nice huh. Lastly ih could be a little dehydrated. A good soak for 15 minutes in a warm bath can't hurt... we soaked loki this time before feedng and it really helped (id like to think anyway). He was very sluggish and his skin looked loose so right in the tub he went then after the soak that evening after dark (since bps are noctournal) we offered food and he pigged. We got some great pix of him outdoors yesterday so there's gonna be a bunch up later today

Try some of those ideas, see how it goes, and at that size loki would eat 1-2 hoppers once a week until winter then nothing till spring. Best thing to do is offer food on a regular schedule regardless if he eats it or not. Hope some of this helps.

kodie, i hate to be the berer of bad news bro...but a ball pythons are the WORST eaters i have ever had! anyone who has ever kept a ball python will tell you they are not very consistant eaters. i used to breed balls and NONE of the 150+ balls i kept ever ate consistantly! they are just naturally like that. and as far as frozen thawed...good luck with that! some will eventually take them, but they are just crappy eaters! you could try putting the thawed rodent and the snake in a brown paper bag, staple it shut and leave it in the cage over night. you can also try dipping the head of the feeder in pure chicken broth. also make sure the mouse is warm when you offer it. some people have even sliced the head open exposing the brains, i have never tried this. with my balls, i got to the point where they could either eat, or starve! they are just so on and off, you just never know. i bred my own rodents in my old house because i had a barn, here i do not...so i could not afford to throw away half the feeders i thawed! anyways, good luck...but expect this with any ball python. they are just not very consistant feeders. i have had them stop eating for six months before, then just start eating one day out of the blue! they seem like they can go for a LONG time without having any issues from not eating. so as long as it doesnt loose alot of weight, i wouldnt worry about it. but the feeding issues with them is why i will never own another ball python

I wouldn't panic too much Kodie we have 3royal pythons that are currently not eating and the longest none eater is a 11yr old female she last ate 14th of september last year and gary's male only eats 6medium rats a year. how old is yours & how long have you had him?

lol, we must have been replying at the same time!i would NOT re~freeze though...i have heard alot of bad stuff about re~freezing, but i have never done any testing or experamenting on this though..but i would not do that. and just so you know, ball pythons need a higher humidity than most people think! hence the shedding issues most people have. in the wild a ball python spends 90% of its life underground deep in burrows and termite mounds, where the humidity can be 45% higher than the savanahs where they are found! so try upping your humidity to around 55 to 60 percent.

lol, we never refreeze any of our rodents, just throw them in the bin or use a carpet python to clear up lol. also a problem we found is alot breeders dont just heat the tubs there snakes are in but the whole room they keep them in.

i have seen breeders do this too, and i KNOW they need to be able to thermoregulate! you would think a BREEDER would know this and give their animals hot spots, but i know breeders who do the whole room temp with no hot spot also...??? i can see with colubrids maybe, but not boas and pythons...in my opinion anyways. i agree sam.

and just a warning kodie, Kel is right about the girbils being like crack! so if you do feed one a girbil, be prepared to ONLY feed girbils, because it is likely that your ball will never eat another rat or mouse. and once it gets bigger it will need like three of these, and at about five bucks apiece, that is an expensive way to feed a snake!

Jst an fyi... thawing a mouse once, leaving it for a few hours to be eaten then refreezing and thawing again is NOT going to cause anydamage to your herp. The biproducts of decomposition are something that doesn't affect them the way it affects us eating spoiled meat. Balls are scavengers/opportunistic eaters by nature and are built to eat carrion. As far as gerbils go that is about $16 a piece here that's why we breed them (and BOY do they breed. The female actually has to breed to give birth so your females are constantly preggers) and they're about the size of a small rat. We also breed rabbits for show competition so he also can get baby rabbits as well for variety and at 2-3 weeks (which woulsd be the appropriate size for a ball) they don't put up much of a fight if you live feed. A lot of feed places also sell F/t rabbits. I saw one on my tegu forum. The recommended humidity on most care sheets and what we keep loki at says between 70-80% with a hot spot temp around 85-90*F. You can alleviate some of the humidity issue if you're using a viv by keeping a plastic tub moist with sphagnum moss for your ball to either sit in or it will add humidity to your viv indirectly. Kinda like a hide that you would make for a leo but larger sized for a ball. Loki loves his moss box.

What kind of enclosure are you using for your ball Kodie? Substrait? Heating?.... all that just like the gecko questionaire... You can copy/paste the leopard gecko care questionaire in this thread and fill out the applicable sections pertinant to your ball so we can ensure it isn't also habitat/husbandry issues.

Here's some links that I found very helpful for my son when he got his first ball (yes I made him educate himself before we would by him the snake. He'd been asking since he was 6 years old, he finally got one when he turned 11, he's now 15 so that makes loki 4 as of may. Sure I could have taught him and told him everything, but I wanted him to do the work on his own).

http://www.kingsnake.com/ballpythonguide/#FAQ

http://www.petuniversity.com/reptiles/snakes/species/ball-python/

I wouldn't let a little thing like going off food prevent me from ever owning an animal esp. if it's "something their known for doing". Almost all herps go off food for the same reasons a bp would. I actually like it when Loki goes into brumation. He gets offered food once a month, maybe twice if we see him out and about, if he refuses, I know that he will eventually eat, generally once the temps out doors are consistantly in the mid to high 70's. My previous female Evilynn (pronounced like evil-lynn) also did this, you just gotta know your animal and appreciate the quarks that come along with the benefits of owning them. I wouldn't give up Loki's liking to be scratched on his head or under his chin for a consistantly eating snake anyday

Kel, i agree that the decomp does not effect snakes like it would us...but where in the world did you hear that a ball python is a scavenger!? they are predators like every other snake on the planet... they are rodent feeders in the wild as well as in captivity. i have been doing this a long time and this is the first time i have ever heard of this. i do know that garter and water snakes will eat a dead fish if they find it, so i guess it is not impossible for a ball to eat a dead rodent if they fine it...but they dont go around scavenging dead animals. for one, they cant bite off chunks of flesh, so unless it was perhaps a smaller animal or rodent, i dont see this as feasable. again, i am not saying it would never happen to eat a dead rodent if they found a somewhat fresh dead one, but i have a hard time seeing them as scavengers. if they were designed to eat dead stuff, why would they have labial heat pits? the pits pick up heat from LIVE warm blooded prey, not dead animals. please dont take this as an attempt at an arguement, but this goes against everything that makes sence to me after over 24 years of keeping, studying, and breeding many types of snakes, thats all. and if you read this online, do you have a link? i am just curious who said this...and i ALWAYS provide a humid hide for ALL of my snakes, the ambient humidity for a ball needs to be around 55 to 60 percent.

All snakes are opportunistic eaters. Who's gonna turn down a free meal that is 0 risk for injury to enjoy? Balls have been known to eat small birds, rodents, lizards, and a varity of other carrion found in their natural habitat. Gerbils are their preferred food in the wild and they will lay down ambush on known game trails but if they can pick up an easy meal along the way most will take it. Alot of shy-er snakes will often eat carrion than risk harming themselves in live prey eating. Just sayin Rick but usually the things I know are things I've collected thru out my educational processes over the last 20-ish years (things including animal behavior, health, genetics, to running my own carpet and tile subcontractorship (which is where my housing tile experience comes in to college experience in pre-law) and I don't have saved sites and proof for all of them, but for those that I DO have the info to referr back to I usually will include links in the original posting.

Personally I think when you take on an animal that you take on the responsibility of feeding that animal what it is designed to eat. It may be captive bred but it still runs on primitive instinct to search out certain food sources. Yeah they can technically survive on mice and rats but it is completely different nutritional values than gerbils. There's certainly a variety of small furry rodents on the savannah to eat and they choose gerbils for a reason. That's what Loki is gonna be on from now on. It's my obligation to provide him what his genetic programming tells him is right, just like it's my job to simulate the best mid-range desert rocky environment my leo needs.

This is his first eating cycle on gerbils since coming out of brumation. He is also 4 and an adult. He is going to be offered food every week and we're going to compare it back to his calenders from previous years that he was mouse fed. We'll see if feeding natural prey (alive or f/t) produces a better feeding ball.

i can guarentee that he will eat girbils better than ANYTHING you can offer it! i also know that that is their preferred food in the wild. i was only re~iderating (sp?) that they are expensive and probably wont eat ANYTHING ELSE once they do eat girbils, and for someone who does not breed girbils, the cost can be rediculous! and as far as balls being opportunistic, like all other snakes, i totally agree with that! ...BUT, they are designed as PREDATORS, not scavengers. and i am in NO WAY questioning your intellect or herp experience, i just wondered where you heard that they are scavengers....thats all. and snakes do not have the mental capacity to sit there and think, "should i eat this live girbil, that could harm me, or find a dead one..."and they also dont have human emotions, such as enjoyment , ect...i think alot of people put too much comparison as far as human thoughts and emotions in it that snakes simply are not capable of...why is my snake "mean"? snakes are not "MEAN", they are simply scared or deffensive...and you are totally right on the fact that they are instinctual creatures, they have been for millions of years and no matter how long "man" keeps and breeds them in captivity, they will always be instinctual...and i agree with you on everything except the fact that they are scavengers...oportunistic yes, but scavengers..i just think otherwise, that is all. i also think that if more people bred girbils, and sold them at a lower price, like feeder mice and rats...more people may have balls that actually eat on a more regualar basis....and PLEASE keep me informed on what you find in your girbil feeding regim, because i too, am inclined to think that your ball(any any other ball on the planet) will chow them when they would not eat other rodents!

Breeding a small gerbil colony isn't expensive or difficult esp. when you have a pet shop to sell them uneaten ones back to during the winter brumation, or seperate your breeding pair so no babies over winter. Most smaller pet shops (ie not petsmart) will buy from private breeders that have healthy stock. I have 1 breeding pair of adults in a 20 gallon tank and their offspring in a 30 gallon tank. Once the next litter is old enough to go into the 30, if we have too many we well them back. Consider he eats 4-ish a feeding average 9 a litter, ya don't need much storage capacity to breed a colony.

Just to clarify something Rick since you seem to be focusing on it, when I said scavenger I ment it in it's litterally defined sense of "an animal or other organism that feeds on dead organic matter" not what I think you're thinking of where the animal actively goes out and searches for dead food like a vulture would. Also yes reptiles DO have the mental capacity to reason if a meal could hurt them and if it was worth the risk... some just don't use it like the anaconda that tries to eat a water buffalo and chokes half way thru it. I certainly wasn't taking anything you said in offence either and sometimes I don't come off too well in text because it doesn't show expression very well, I tend to be more dry and factual, BUT the only reason I stated my experiences was just to show that not everything can always be backed up with ready links and hard data in writing but it surely will if I can .

no worries, i understand where you are coming from. i have bred rodents on a large scale before, and i understand the ins and outs of it, i am not sure of what kodie was planning, that is all. and if we dissagree on something, so what, we both have a working brain and high understanding of how reptiles work, i will never have hard feelings or hold a grudge because someone may dissagree with me! i feel no differently about you than i did yesterday Kel! i like you and it is obvoius to me that you know what you are talking about, so no worries on my end! i see what you are saying about them being oportunistic, maybe we both kinda took what the other said a little out of context, but i see what you meant now..no biggie. no love loss here

and this is why I could never own a snake.. I could feed the dead mice and rats.. but I couldn't breed gerbils to be fed.. im not against it because it's their natural food, it's just that I've kept many gerbils as pets in the past

- Sex: Unkown
- Age & Weight: I havent had it for long,. so I'm not sure. It's 25" long, and I can see a defined triangular shape to it.
- Morph: Normal.
- How long have you owned: About a week.
- Where was he/she obtained: Alligator Alley (Local petshop).
- Is your leo wild caught or captive bred: I assume captive bred.

A) Health/History
- How often do you handle: I'm trying to limit handling for now, so very little.
- Is it acting any different today? Nothing different since I got it.
- Has he/she had any problems in the past, if so please describe. N/A
B) Fecals
- Describe-Do they look any different than normal- As far as I know, it was normal. It was a good sized poo, held form, no diarrhea.
- When was the last time he/she went: yesterday evening.
C) Problem
- Please briefly describe the problem/issue you are experiencing and how long it has been going on: I tried offering F/T and it almost seemed afraid of it.

Housing:
A) Enclosure
- Size: 41 Qt tub
- Type (ex. glass tank, screen enclosure, tub kept) Tub
- Type of substrate (sand, vinyl tiles, ceramic/stone tiles, etc.) Sphagnum
- Hides (how many, location and type (hothide, humid hide, regular hide etc.)one hide on the warm side, one on the cool side, and a humid hide.
B) Heating
- What is your main heat source (heat bulbs, under tank heat mat etc) Zoomed UTH for 10-20 gallon tanks.
- What are your cage temps (hot side and cool side) 86-90F on warm, and 79-82 on the cool.
- Method of regulating your heat source (thermostat, rheostat, light dimmer etc.) rheostat
- What are you using to measure your temps (probe thermometer, infrared lazer tempo gun, stick on temp gauge, etc)Zoomed digital thermometer.
- Do you have any lights (describe type and cycle duration) Natural light.
C) Cage mates
- How many (males, females) N/A
- Describe health, or previous problems of cage mates N/A

Describe Diet:
A) Typical diet
- What are you feeding We bought frozen fuzzies, and found that they a little small for the snake, so we are feeding them fist then going to move up to bigger prey.
- How often are you feeding and how much per feeding? We've only offered as of yet, it hasnt taken.
- How are you feeding (hand fed, tongs/tweezers, left in dish, ect) tongs

Ok Kodie a couple things hon... some snakes don't feel comfortable with sphagnum moss straight off... you may want to try aspen bedding insted and limit the sphag to one side until he gets use to it, or use a seperate tub to make a moist hide like you would for a leo only BP sized.

Also you're right feeding fuzzies are much too small for that size snake. He can eat anything that is smaller around than the widest part of his body. You might want to try small adult mice as the fuzzies may seem not worth his time to eat. Also you may want to try buying live and whacking it yourself to feed. freezing breaks down the body on a cellular level which may be unappealing to him it could alter the smell plus fuzzies don't really smell too mouse like since they are so young and don't emit any pheramones.

When feeding with tongs you really do need to bob the mouse around a bit to catch his attention like live prey would. Just holding it there isn't going to get his attention. We never had any luck tong feeding Loki, OR feeding him F/T mice. The only dead mice he ever ate were fresh killed.

Make sure you get some type of humidity gague in that tub as he needs a humidity range between 60-80%. He also needs a rather large water bowl for soaking and drinking. That will also help with humidity in your tub. Make sure there's plenty of ventilation as if it starts smelling stale in there he could be put off and get depressed. Sphag smells very strong when damp. Your temps are good.

I wouldn't be too afraid to hold him straight away honestly. he needs to get use to your scent as well as his environment, I'd just keep handling session short maybe 5-10 minutes once or twice a day (morning and evening). We handled Loki from pretty much day 3 and he never had problems settling in and he's a pretty docile boy.

I wouldn't be to worried if he doesn't eat straight away. It could take upwards of a month for him to decide to eat, but even at that size he should be fine. Honestly I would set up a seperate feeding tank, maybe a 10 gallon glass terrarium, and try live feeding to see how that thrills him. I noticed with Loki his desire to hunt live food was much stronger than his desire to eat carrion at that age.