18 month old Stimpsons isn’t eating and might be partially blind?

[Issy.r]

A couple of weeks ago I bought my first reptile, an 18month old female Stimpson Python, she’s a beautiful little thing and very friendly. When I purchased her, the breeders informed me that she had been a somewhat fussy eater but does eat pretty regularly. She came home about 3 weeks ago and i have offered her a fuzzy once a week with no success, making her last meal the 20/09. She’s about 50cm long and weighs 41g, she hasn’t lost any weight since getting home.

I’m not hugely concerned about this given the time of year and the whole ‘she’s a snake’ thing, however my husband was handling her a few days after getting her home and commented that he thought she was blind. I brushed this off initially as her preparing for shed (she wasn’t) but have since watched her more closely and am convinced she’s is somewhat vision impaired. I’ve attached pictures that show this as best I can, but basically one of her eyes is normal, and the other appears to have no ‘iris’, I guess is the best way to describe it. Even with 1 eye appearing normal, she is constantly using her snout to feel her way around her enclosure and I wonder if this is impacting her being a fussy eater?

The other thing that has surprised both my husband and I about her is how much she loves being up high. She has 2 hides, which she now rarely uses, instead spending pretty much all her time on the top of 2 vines on the back wall and will actively seek higher ground whenever possible.

I’m hoping some people here can share any advice or experiences with situations like this, if she is partially blind how different does her care need to be etc and any tips and tricks on getting her to eat would also be appreciated. We so far have been using warm water to heat the mouse, ensuring to get the centre of the fuzzy to body temp, and the most recent feeding attempt I pierced it’s skin and pinched the nose.
Any and all help appreciated

 

[Sdaji]

I think you mean no pupil rather than no iris? It's difficult to tell from the picture. Pythons contract and dilate their eyes dramatically depending on their state of alertness and the light level, so it's difficult to say much from a single picture which is grainy.

Some snakes are up snakes, some are down snakes. When it comes to some species (like Chondros for a well-known example) they're all up snakes, in some species they're all down snakes, when it comes to Antaresia some individuals always want to go up, some always want to go down, and some flip around sometimes going up, sometimes down, etc. This is normal.

I've raised a few snakes with no eyes, they generally don't have any unusual care requirements.

As for feeding tips, there are thousands of feeding guides out there in magazines and online (I've written some of them myself), I won't rewrite all the generic advice here, but I wouldn't be worried about an adult snake not eating for a short time early in the feeding season (three weeks between meals is like me going a few hours between meals, and these days I usually only eat one or two meals per day which is like a snake going much longer than 3 weeks between meals), although she does look small for her age, has a history of bad feeding, and probably wasn't a good choice as a first snake unless you like a challenge. For completely non urgent cases of snakes not eating like this, I usually just don't offer anything for a couple of months, so when the opportunity to eat comes along they say 'Oh, I'd better take it' rather than 'I keep getting hassled by mice, it's so annoying' and having a routine of ignoring meals firmly established.