Hi i'm new on here & i'm hoping someone can help me? I've got a 10 month old female pastel weighing in at 420 grams. I've had her sinse she was 3 momths old. She's always fed on time & shed on the last weekend of every month. At the beggining of july I changed her food up to small rat weiners. They were slightly big worked out at 17% of her body weight but after two feeds she'd be at 15%. She put on her usual 20 grams a week till the end of the month & shed as usual. Then three weeks later shef again after gaining 150 grams! The week after she took her food but didn't strike like she would normaly. The following week she wouldn't eat. Then the week after she ate but again didn't strike. Sinse then she hasn't eaten. Its been a month now. Although she hasn't lost weight she does look thin now. I think she's been growing longer (she's roughly 28" long now) & she's showing signs she's going to shed soon.
Is it ok for her togo this long without eating? I know with adults its ok but at this age? Should I be worried? Is there anything I can do to try & make her feed? I'be tried scalping the rat & it didn't work.
Iv heard you can put the snake and rat in a brown bag and leave them there over nite aslong as its f/t rat!!im new to the whole royal keeping myself but u have joined the right forum and some one here will be able to help you!!good luck
That seems to be normal. Sometimes they eat sometimes they don't. That's part of their life. If she is due to shed I wouldn't offer her any food till after shed. Also try with smaller rat. Something like 10% of her body weight or even slightly smaller. See where you get with that.
I did try.smaller rats but no luck. I wouldn't be so worried if she wasn't so young or starting to get thin. I'm hoping her body is just catcging up after gaining more than double what she would gain in a month in 3 weeks. Fingers crossed after her shed she will.
I say she's female but i'm only going by what I was told at the shop. I read online that some males reach sexual maturity at 400 grams & they go off there food at this point. Is that true?
Both females and males can and will stop eating from time to time. Its nothing to worry about really. All you need to do when a otherwise healthy snake stops feeding is make sure you have a recent accurate weight and monitor weight loss, once it loses 10% of its original weight loss (remember when a Royal poops it loses a vast amount of weight so ideally use the last empty weight you have or wait until it poops) then you can start to worry a little bit but until then its just a sit and wait scenario.
When my Royal stops feeding I will only offer food once a month to save on waste, both years he has fasted he has eaten mid fast too, I just accept that he knows what he is doing and let him get on with it.
Ok so she still hasn't eaten even though she has grown another two inches. & now over the last week to ten days she has lost twenty gramms. I'm starting to get worried now. There are no visable signs of stress or illness.
If anyone has any clue i'd appriciate any help at all.
Yes shed perfectly, all in one. First time she's shed whole. There was one of the white balls after too. Calcium build up isn't it? I would have thought that was a sign she was still getting nourishment from her last feed?
At last my baby ate! She's had two feeds now! An adult mouse last week & a medium rat weaner. Her weight has shot up by 100 grams since eating the rat but she does need to empty herself lol!
Feeding problems
Posted - 20/09/2012 : 23:01:14
