Royal Python HELP?????/??

Question

My royal python hasn't eaten for about 3 months. What can i do?

Answer 1

Ball/Royal Pythons are notoriously picky eaters, and many will often skip meals, but don't worry too much - a healthy snake will never starve itself to death and they can last a very long time without food.

There are many way to try to 'bribe' a snake to feed. Try offering it a gerbil, those are a delicacy for the pythons, also try offering smaller food than it would normally eat, try offering an appropriately sized rat if it normally eats mice or vice versa. Also if you normally feed pre-killed, try live food.

The last method I can think of off the top of my head is kind of gross, it's to offer a pre-killed mouse with it's skull split open, I'm not sure what makes it more appealing to the snake, but I've heard of it working.

If your snake goes much longer without eating you should take it to a vet, just in case.

Answer 2

the trick for getting my bp to eat was finding his natural food in the wild... the african soft fur rat. check around at local reptile stores and if you cant find them there try looking for a breeder on www.asfrats.info. ive had no problems since i found those

Answer 3

Check out this care sheet to make sure you are keeping him correctly as far as heat and humidity and make sure an experienced reptile vet has examined him for intestinal parasites.

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

Answer 4

Sometimes this is normal, on average ball pythons go up to 6 months without eating. And the record is 2 years. So you shouldn't worry unless it goes past 6 months.

To try to provoke it to eat, put the mouse near it's enclosure for about half an hour so the snake smells the mouse and gets it in the "feeding mood".

Do you feed live or frozen thawed? If you feed live, try using tongs and pick the mouse up by the tail, then put it infront of the snake's face - but at a reasonable distance and if it forms an "S" shape with its neck, its in its stike position. But if you feed F/T do the same but try moving the mouse around with the tongs as if making it alive.

Otherwise, there isn't much you can do to provoke it to eat. So if he/she doesn't eat for another 3 months take it to the vet to see if it has a problem or they can force feed it and teach you how to do that.

I hope all goes well and your Royal eats for you, good luck.