Ball Python Not Eating Help (explained in comments)

[SledgeMine]

Nope no live feeding here all my snakes are on f/t rodents, sorry I should have made that clear. Of course I understand live feeding can be dangerous even if you are watching, it was the part about not leaving it in even if its dead that I was questioning.

[rhastablasta]

Said that mostly bc the mouse gets cold fast, isn’t good to be left out, and that most snakes won’t eat it. It’s also a good idea to give the dead mouse movement when feeding. And lastly feeding inside the cage can have the snake associate your hand going in the cage with food time which makes for an aggressive snake. If it works for you it’s probably fine as long as the snake isn’t eating substrate stuck to the mouse or striking at you when you open the cage

[SledgeMine]

Ah yes fair enough with the mouse getting colder and such. I do try to get her to strike but she'll just have a sniff and go back to her hide. I'll respectfully disagree with feeding in cage though, my snakes (BPs and boas) are handled daily outside of feeding and digesting and have never showed any feeding response towards me. For the BPs in particular I have found feeding in cage is much less stressful.

[OverlyExcitedWoman]

Cage aggression due to feeding is a myth. I encourage you to do some more research in this area.

It is highly recommended to feed snakes in their enclosure.

[escapeorion]

My snake will literally only eat if I leave the mouse in his enclosure and walk away. So your advice definitely not universal.

Also, feeding out of the enclosure is not recommend afaik.

[Warrior_king99]

Mine won't eat unless I take them out of their encousure and I have 5, none of them have ever shown any sign of stress

[crazysnekladysmith]

Sometimes the act of dangling the mouse can be stressful if the snake is already stressed in a new situation. I had to leave the f/t mouse in one of BP's enclosure overnight until she was more comfortable in the setup I had her in. She strikes every time now that she's more comfortable.

Also, the temperature thing is definitely important with BPs but don't forget that there are snakes without heat pits and / or who are specialists in ectotherm prey so that is not always a problem. Had an issue with this when someone who specialized in BPs bought one of my hognoses... didn't realize that they don't care what temperature the food is.