Eastern small blotched not eating

[morpheus21]

Hi,
my male eastern small blotched has not eaten for about a month. He has done this to me before but was able to fix that with scenting the mice with rat (breeder had him on rats and when I got him my rats hadn't started breeding yet and he took unscented mice for a couple of weeks), the other time he went off the rats I had to scent his food with skinks for a while until he went back to unscented food. Now he is refusing, defrosted unscented rats and mice, scented rats and mice and live fuzzy mice. His last 2 feeds were live fuzzy rats, as he was on a hunger strike for a couple of weeks, and they really would not have filled him up that much. Have no idea why he is doing this or how to get him to start feeding again. Any help would be much appreciated.

thanx

 

[africancichlidau]

How old , large, what are his temps etc? Maybe he's just not a big eater.

 

[soulweaver]

do you feed him in the day or at night? you said your rats arn't breeding at this stage, can you go buy some?

 

[spottedpython]

don't worry my spotted python is off food to hasn't eatten in like 3 to 4 months due to the weather they can go 8 months without food i've been told from breeders.

 

[Guest]

unless u saw the 8 month thing of WAU?

 

[hey_im_sam]

I had a boa go for almost a year without food with no visible weight loss, but she was quite a lot larger than any spotted... (lol lib )

 

[morpheus21]

He is about 2 and a half years old and around the 3 foot mark. my rats weren't breeding when I first got him 2 years ago. Always feed him at night. Temps are same as always don't know exact temps but he has a heat mat that takes up about a quarter of the floor which he stays on all day until he starts to move around at night. He was an excellent eater and if I were to pick him up in the past with either rat or mouse smell on my hands he would latch on to my hand and I would often have to wait a while for him to finally realise that he wouldn't be able to eat my hand, have had a few instances where he latched on to the end of a finger and proceded to engulf it until he could go no more which is really quite and unsual experience and there was even a period where everytime I picked him up he expected food and he would latch on to me or try to even though I had no other scent on my hands. I am hoping that he has gone off simply because of the weather even though my coastal is still eating but at the same time I just can't help but worry about him.

 

[spottedpython]

thats what i'm like i have tryed everything to get my girl eatting the only thing i could do is get her force fed but i don't want to do that so i'm playing the waiting game

 

[earthmother]

Could it be the weather?

 

[hugsta]

Can also be photoperiod, they seem to know that when days are shorter its time to breed and to not eat. That is unless you have a uv light on a timer.
Just a thought.

 

[morpheus21]

I think it may be the photoperiod, don't have him on a uv light. My blue tongues have been off eating for a while now even though I haven't changed anything with them but I know it's because of winter as they did the exact same thing last year.

 

[spottedpython]

morheus21 spotted pythons don't need uv lighting they get all there nutrience and calcium out of there food.

 

[lutzd]

Probably photo-period. Big guy advised me, when I bought my first snake off him, that you can't fool them if they can see an outside window - he was right!

 

[Sdaji]

it's completely normal for an adult spotted python to sense the season and stop eating for a few months, don't worry at all. For a healthy adult spotted python, 8 months without food would be no drama at all, my guess is that it would take at least two years for one to starve to death, depending on conditions.

 

[ether]

Spotted there is some arguement that it is benificail to all pythons to have UV light, not just diamond pythons. Personally i think that they do and if it isnt doing any harm and it is making the snake look nicer why not use it.

 

[ether]

Spotted there is some arguement that it is benificail to all pythons to have UV light, not just diamond pythons. Personally i think that they do and if it isnt doing any harm and it is making the snake look nicer why not use it.

Regards Ether

 

[hugsta]

Even though it is apparently not necessary to supply uv to a lot of herps, I supply uv in all my tanks, for the extra $45 spent it makes life a lot easier if you want to move your animals around from one enclosure to the next. It's certainly doing them no harm and can only really benefit them in the long run.