Hello everyone. I am looking to find out information on how to heal the mind of a reptile that was neglected and abused in the beginning stages of his life for over a year. I have raised 4 other ball pythons whom I no longer have custody of. The ex husband has them however I have never witnessed behavior in my other pythons such as my new snake. The poor thing freaks out immediately after he has defecated and realized that his stomach is available for food. Heres some background. When I got this snake, ("Tome'"), he was so famished that his body was thin and limp. When I would pick him up to hold him, he would immediately vomit and defecate at the same time. I took him to a nearby friend of mine who is a vet. Basically we had one shot at saving this poor little guy and that was to litterally shoot him up with Pedialite for 4 days using small diabetic needles. By the 4th day, Tome' began to actually move on his own. I kept him outside in natural sunlight for 2 hours at a time nearly every day for a full week. (Thank God I like to Garden!) Finally I tried feeding him a small mouse. At this stage, Tome' was about 4 1/2 foot long (this is a guess), extremely thin. He could not hold the small mouse down. Another week went by, I gave him 1 more shot of Pedialite and he finally stomached a small black mouse. He waited another 2 weeks, ate again and then ever since then, he has ate every single Sunday for the last 5 months. I wouldn't normally see this as alarming seeing as my 6 ft female used to eat every week for at least 6-7 weeks and then would take long brakes where she could care 1 cent about food. I am going to explain the eating behavior of my other 4 snakes as well as the general behaviour I have observed by snakes of my friends and then describe my current snakes behaviour. All 4 of my other snakes were raised from babies and very very doscile. It normally took a large snake of mine about an hour to eat someting not quite as large as what Tome' eats. After eating, they chose to be left alone, will defecate and generally like attention and are quiet and calm mannered. My snakes could go about 2-3 weeks at a time without showing signs of hunger. Signs of hunger consisted of a searching mode that usually caused them to try and exit the cage. They were easy to be jossled from sleep obviously looking for food. Within a day, I'd have them well fed and they would be nice and happy. I could move them within 2 days without any problem or seeming to agitate them in any way. My 4 snakes seemed very happy at home, didn't want for much and had very doscile presentation. Now, here we go to the neglected snake, Tome'. As I stated, he has ate every week for the last 5 months however he is never, never, never satisfied. He eats Jumbo rats the size of our pet stores' large ginnea pigs. (He can dislocate his jaw and divour it within 15 minutes! It took my 6 foot snake an hour to eat a rat smaller than his jumbo rat) If I try feeding him something smaller, he of course divours it but immediately searches endlessly for hours trying to exit the cage. He will not settle down until you feed him another rat. The only down time this poor snake gets is right after he eats. I cannot touch him after he eats without him hissing loud enough to hear him across the room. Within about 5 -6 days, he has digested the rat and defecates. 1 more day goes by and like clockwork, he is a total unsettled feeding frenzy. You cannot calm him. His demeanor is always in an upset. While holding him, he never settles. The only time I can get him too is while giving deep massages after a bath. (yes, I do that). This thing is a real live monster. He has grown to about 5'2" (I would guess based on him stretched out against my body. I am 5'4". From my feet, he hits my chin.) He is thick and huge. He is well taken care of, inside of a 100 gallon tank. He has UVB lamp on 8-10 hrs a day, humidity is awesome inside of the cage. I truly believe that this thing thinks he will never eat again. He went for an entire year abandoned in the back of an old trailer, no heat during the winter, locked inside a cage with no way out, no light, just darkness. I understand that snakes can go a year without eating however they are tropical animals. A year without eating in conditions like he was under surely would kill a snake. He is LUCKY TO BE ALIVE. I want him to have a good life. Just as humans have minds that can react to horrible neglect with OCD, PTSD, other conditions, I would assume so could animals. It is as though this snake freaks out the minute he feels an empty stomach. Suddenly he is locked inside a closed cage again without any food. I truly want to help this snake even if it means leaving him to the wild but I've heard that is worse than confinement for these guys. Someone please offer suggestions. Rememeber, his behavior is not that of a normal snake. He finds no rest until he eats again. He may sleep for a couple hours a day and from that time on, he is pecking at the top of the cage or scraggling around your arms. People used to say I had "snake medicine" due to my ability to charm reptiles. Well it is as though I have lost that magic with this one. He is just a never ending basket case. SORRY FOR THE LONG POST BUT ITS IMPORTANT TO ME. THANK YOU.
What I would recommend is to just not over feed him. Just because he wants more food doesn't mean he will be able to stomach it later. If you overfeed him and he regurgitates later then it could set back his recovery. As for him always wanting to get out of the cage, it may be due to the fact that he is in a 100 gallon tank. This is too big even for a full grown ball python. He might feel too exposed in such a large cage.
That's a big boy! Sounds like he feels a serious need to make up for lost time, with all that eating. There's no way of being certain how old he is, but he's really big for a male ball python. They don't get much bigger than that! (My largest female is only 5 feet, and she's a really big girl). First, stop feeding him Jumbo-sized rats. I realize he likes them, but they're really not good for him. Feed him a medium-sized rat, instead. He will not suffer from lack of nutrition. Jumbo rats actually have more fat on them than younger rats, and this extra fat is not good for his health. It would be better to feed him two smaller rats, than one jumbo. Evaluate his body condition: A fat ball python shows skin through their scales when at rest, and may have an irregular look around the tail (the body being fatter than the tail itself, instead of tapering smoothly). Obesity is a SERIOUS health concern in captive pythons, and will cause organ failure in the long run. If he is not showing signs of obesity, carry on feeding him what he wants. If he is, switch him to small rats until he loses the weight, or fast him for a few months until he's down to a proper size. At his length, he should weigh around 3000 to 3200 grams, no more than that. Now, on to his behavior. Ball pythons roam constantly because they are unhappy with their current environment. The reason they are unhappy is what has to be determined. In most cases, the cage is either too large, or too small, and they do not have a proper hide. In the wild, ball pythons spend most of their time hiding in rodent burrows and termite mounds, and if they aren't in a small, secure, enclosed space, they aren't comfortable. A hide should have only one entrance, and be JUST large enough for the snake to squeeze into. A ball python with no place to hide is almost always an unhappy ball python. Ball pythons don't experience hunger in the same way that mammals do. We can infer this by the fact that they will voluntarily stop eating for months at a time, and will refuse food if they're in an environment they think is really insecure. Male ball pythons usually eat heartily over the summer, and then slow down or even stop over the winter, during the breeding season. (Some of my males will eat through the breeding season, but none eat as regularly as they do during the summer). Some males will begin roaming a lot when they can smell a female that is receptive. She will release pheromones to attract the males. If you really want your boy to stop obsessing over food...you could throw in the shed from an adult female with him, and he'll start thinking about something else, lol. As for his inability to settle when handled...I have a few ball pythons like that. It really MAY just be his personality, and nothing to do with the conditions he was found in. We tend to anthropomorphize our pets quite a bit, but the psychology of a ball python is nothing like ours. The situation he was in would be absolute hell for a human being, but for a ball python, it was simply too cold, and his fasting went on for too long. The darkness and confinement were comfortable, the hunger was probably not very bothersome--the cold was the worst of it. (The cold would also have reduced his appetite, even as he was starving). Now he is warm, and food is available. Eating to build up a good store of fat, in case hard times come again, is what ball pythons like to do. Throw him up on a scale, and see if he's achieved his goal. If he's at the right weight, just reduce his food. He may be willing to eat until he is a fat snake sausage, but that's not in his best interests. He doesn't have OCD, and he isn't traumatized--he's just doing the things that ball pythons would do in the wild, to survive.
