SO I got a ball python hes close to 2 feet now and in good health. Well now that hes on rats (hes been pretty good in attacking and getting them down since we switched). Then one night we threw in a rat like always I guess this one was a little smarter and got the better of him (there are no bite marks and his jaw seems to be ok the rat manage to twist to get free then again it happened so fast I dont know what actually happened). Now he wont even strike at them when we put them in there so I would grab their tail and dangle them in front of him still wont strike. For the heck of it I bought 2 mice and he ate them up in seconds. So whats the deal with my snake? Did his ego get hurt and now he wont eat them anymore? (lol) Or is he too scared to deal with them again in fear of what happened?
how about something else to eat for a while?
eating the same thing over and over can get boring.
and exercise, maybe the bathtub or somewhere fence off.
This rat has probably put him off, if you had a bad experience you wouldn't be so keen to do the same thing again next time right? Try feeding him dead defrosted food next time, and just leave it in his tank for him to eat in his own time. It might be worth building up from smaller size prey again before offering that same size rat to help build up his confidence. Rats can cause serious damage, your snake was lucky.
try not feeding as often as well feed him smaller for the first couple then offer a rat dipped in the broth as stated before just keep trying that he will eventually take back to rats once he does you wont need to dip in broth but before you feed either kill or stun the rat i rescued a ball python like that a while back took me a couple months to get him eating right but its worth the effort to know that hes on track
If the rat twisted the it could have caused damage to teeth or muscles with in the jaw. This is a prime example of why not to feed live food to your pet snake
Because they associate food with their sense of smell, your snake may associate the smell of a rat with pain or fear. If you HAVE TO feed him rats, dip the rat in chicken broth before dropping him in the cage. Sounds funky, but it's an option.
i don't own a snake! snakes are scary sorry snake people
