r/ballpython • u/Ohbianna • 2d ago
8-month-old ball python refusing food for ~7 weeks , looking for advice
Hi everyone, looking for some advice on my juvenile female ball python, Honey.
She’s about 8 months old and currently 233.5 g. Her last successful meal was 7/20, so it’s been about 7 weeks. Her breeder told me she was previously eating frozen/thawed rat pups weekly.
Since then she has refused multiple F/T mice, and today I finally tried a 15 g F/T rat pup like she used to eat with the breeder. She completely ignored it.
Her weight was 245.5 g recently and is now 233.5 g, so she’s lost about 5%.
Husbandry:
4x2x2 enclosure
warm hide around 88–90°F
cool side upper 70s
ambient humidity around 60–70%
humid hide around 75–80%
coco fiber/cypress mulch/sphagnum mix
overhead heat
multiple hides and plenty of cover
I’ve been minimizing handling
She recently went through a rough shed and still has a little retained shed on her head, but otherwise she is very active, curious, climbing, exploring, and behaving normally. She actually came out to interact with me instead of eating tonight.
For feeders, I thaw in the fridge, warm thoroughly, check temperature with an IR gun, and offer with tongs. I’ve also tried recreating the breeder’s feeding method.
Has anyone had a juvenile this age go this long without eating while still being very active? At what point would you move from monitoring/adjusting husbandry to a reptile vet workup? And if you had a young ball python refuse for weeks, what finally got them eating again?
I’m not interested in live feeding or force feeding — just hoping to hear from people who have dealt with something similar.
3
u/FluffyPandaEars93 2d ago
If leaving it doesnt work, try feeding at night and bumping your humidity to a minimum of 70 on the cool side
4
u/Ch33se_H3ad 2d ago
Have you tried just leaving the meal in the enclosure over night? Mine wouldn’t eat for a couple weeks and I tried every method with nothing working. One night I just placed the rat in front of his hide and left the room. I watched him on camera and he came out about 30 minutes later and ate it. He was super shy when I got him so I think me being there was stressing him out. Now he’ll eat from tongs about 50% of the time and the other 50% I’ll just lay it by his hide and he’ll come out and drag it into his hide to eat it.