Diamond Python WILL NOT EAT!!!!

[melinda27]

G'day everyone!! I have a four year old diamond python and she is refusing food. She was always a very aggressive feeder until we moved over a year ago. It was winter so we had her cooling off but it come around to bumping the heat up again was when we started having issues. She wasn't interested in food at all (frozen subrats) and started getting scale rot underneath. I took her to the vet and she gave her an oral parasite medication (in case she had worms or something) and I gave her antibiotic injections for a couple months to clear the scale rot which cleared it up well in the end. The vet said that snakes don't normally just go off frozen food and wanted to do xrays and bloodtesting and suggested she probably had a vitamin deficiency from not enough uv. We regularly took her outside, replaced the uv globes every couple months and had the uv on everyday so I wasn't prepared to pay $1200 when I didn't think it would really help. She was pretty underweight at this point so we decided to try her on a live bird to maybe kickstart her instincts. :shock: (I would like to mention that I am very much against live feeding due to the cruelty and potential danger to the snake however the snake was very underweight at this point and we were willing to give anything a go). So this is the timeline:

We put the heat up, she seemed a bit interested but wouldn't strike. At first I thought she may have had problems in her mouth and maybe abscess or something but it was all clear. After refusing for a few months she then took a couple of frozen s from the bottom of the container. After that though she wasn't interested in anything at all. We still offered her regularly but when she'd lost a fair bit of weight we took her to the vet. Gave her live birds which she would strike and eat (but she still wouldn't take the frozen). Than we started force feeding her sub adult frozen rats just as she was nearly finished the live birds/mice which seemed to be working. She put on some weight, was shedding regularly but still wouldn't go for the frozen food (which I had expected as someone told me if you feed them live they never go back to the frozen... but she really wasn't on the frozen anyway). Anyway, the last frozen s she spat out so we decided instead of her trying to live off a little live mouse to get a live rat. She was interested in it but didn't take it so... we now have a difficult snake that wont eat, a pet rat, and my husband trying to make me get rid of the snake


Can anyone help please??

( The setup of the enclosure hadn't changed and contains UV lamp, thermostat and heat lamps up one side. We also only moved an hour away so the climate didn't change)

Also the temp is usual around 30deg cel

 

[FAY]

Melina, not sure whereabouts you are But none of ours are earing yet as breeding is on their mind atm

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Diamonds and Bredli are the last to breed

 

[Cold-B-Hearts]

a four year old snake normally has some size so you shouldn't worry to much. A snake dosn't need to eat every 7-10 days to be healthy. i just offered my jungle his first rat in 223 days as he has just come out of breeding. He is still a healthy snake. Personally i think the worse thing you can do if you have a fussy eater is wave something in his face every few days.
have you tried offering your snake a pre-killed animal.
Cheers Liam

 

[43nickw]

i am having the same problem with my 3 year old female jungle always been a pig but has refused a meal for 3 months now. still fat but i wish she would eat

 

[Cold-B-Hearts]

They will come around

 

[andynic07]

Maybe post a picture of your animal, people are saying there is nothing to worry about without seeing the animal. There could be something wrong with your snake that is making it loose weight and going off it's food may just be a symptom. Normally not eating for that amount of time is nothing to worry about but combined with a lot of weight loss it may be a problem.

 

[Bushman]

As Andy has suggested it would help if we could see the snake to assess its condition.
As far as you can tell, does it currently have any health issues?

 

[PythonLegs]

As Fay said, plenty of diamonds not looking to eat yet. Sounds like you jumped the gun on live feeding and have made the situation worse. Still, glad you got the rat out before it killed your snake. Thats..something?

 

[melinda27]

View attachment 298748

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I posted a pic, sorry if its not that clear! She doesn't have any health conditions that I know about. She looks a lot better now than she did before. She lost a noticeable amount of weight before I started the live feeding and I only did that because I thought she was going to die. As I said, this has been going on since last breeding season and I didn't cool her off this time as I didn't think she would have made it through. She had a lot of loose skin around her! I tried pre killing and braining but she would just stay on it but wouldn't strike until I couldn't hold it anymore

 

[PythonLegs]

Pic doesn't work.

 

[melinda27]

View attachment 298759

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I don't know why its not working but I tried to upload it again

 

[andynic07]

Still no good, what device are you trying to upload photos from?

 

[melinda27]

from my pc. when I click on it , it opens for me.

 

[andynic07]

That one worked and your diamond looks really healthy to me and as stated maybe your worry is premature.

 

[Diamond]

Maybe its because its the Breeding season.

 

[melinda27]

so would you recommend waiting for a month and offering a frozen and if she doesn't take it , wait another month so on???

 

[andynic07]

That is what I would do, as others have said it is breeding season for diamond pythons. Is that a heat rock that it is perched on or just something to get it closer to the heat?

 

[albinowoma]

Something else you could try is the egg method. Get the egg crack it into a container and warm it in the microwave. Dunk the head of the warm whatever you're going to feed and hopefully that'll work. It seems to most of the time good luck

 

[Bushman]

As far as I can tell from the picture you've provided, I can see nothing wrong with it and it seems to be in reasonable condition. Since you've also confirmed that there are no current health issues, then I wouldn't worry about your Diamond Python not eating at this time of year. As mentioned, Diamonds are often focused on finding a mate in the Spring, so eat lightly, if at all, especially males in my experience. Are you sure that it's a female? Is it restless in its enclosure i.e trying to get out or pacing?

 

[Chris1]

my female diamond normally starts eating around now, my male starts in november,..

nothing to worry about, like everyone else has said they have other things on their minds,...