Childrens Python not Feeding
Question
Hi, my name is Denise, I have two childrens pythons, born in December last year, so they are still babies, the female is eating well, but my male Loui has stopped eating altogether, I have tried live and frozen pinkies, but he is not interested in them, he has not eatin now for about three months, so I am getting a bit concerned, could you please give me some advice, I would realy appreciate it, thankyou
Kind Regards : Denise
Answer
Hi Denise,
I'm asuming a few things about this.
1) The cage temperature is OK
2) You have hide boxes etc for them in the cages.
I take mine out of the cage to feed. If you do this, make sure you feed them is in a confined space, preferably somewhere they cannot see out from. Even a darkened shoebox held together with tape and some small holes if you need to. Try to disturb the snake as little as possible and leave him in a darker area when you have the pinky in with him.
You can alos try scenting the pinkies with skinks or lizards as they feed on these in the wild. Scenting means washing the pinky with some water and then rubbing a skink ot lizard over the pinky.
You can try feeding live again or you could try braining a dead pinkie. Braining a pinkie means cutting open the mouse's skull and exposing the brain fluid. Gory, I know.
When I started mine on dead pinkies I used to shake the pinky in front of it's nose. I took quite a while for one of them to start on this.
Three months is quite a while but young snakes can go for 6 months or more without food. (One owner I know says they can go for up to 12 months)
I would keep offering the snake food every couple of weeks and he should take it at some point.
I'm not sure where you live but you should probably see a vet if the snake has not eaten after about 6 months or even earlier as there may be a parasitic problem or bacterial infection.
There are a list of vets from this site http://www.anapsid.org/vets/index.html
You could also try force feeding the snake but this is a fairly drastic measure that should not be taken lightly. It may be useful to get some assistance from an experienced herp owner before doing this.
Another place you could ask for help is on one of the many forums around
on the web. There is a forum at http://aussiepythons.com that
specializes in Australian pythons and they may have some other ideas. There
is also an article on my site here.
Postscript
Thanks for your good advice, Loui my snake ate his pinkie. What you said worked well, the shoe box thing. I am in China at the moment and I was very happy that Loui ate the night before I left, thankyou again for your great advice.
Kind Regards Denise
Mark Chapple is the Author of "How to build enclosures
for reptiles"
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detailed diagrams and easy to follow, step-by-step instructions.
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