hi all,

ive just taken on my friends 5 year old female python (shes 5.5 feet) as his moving abroad. Hes given me all the advise he can but im still quite nervous as its all new and i dont want to get anything wrong. She hasnt been feeding very well (he said its been 1month) so far.

Any1 got any tips for a beginners just to help settle my nerves, Shes a real beauty and i cant wait till i have no more questions to ask!!!

warm the rat up before trying to feed it to her.. you can also try getting some rat bedding and submerging the defrosted rat into it to pass on the scent.

well 1 thing you will allways find something to ask lol or find out you never stop learning lol and i whould say your going to be nervous its a big snake for your first 1 but ball pythons are said to be a great biginner snake i have had them myself also and i have never been bitten every i have had snakes strike at me but they have just like slapped my hand lol and the not feeding may be due to breeding season you could also try cutting the rat in half and that usually helps but make shure the rat is defrosted completely and dont use hot water like from a kettle just run your hot tap untill its steaming and then fill a cup and pop the rat in. and after about 15 mins it should be ok just give it a squish and make shure its not hard and you carnt feel any cold. also adter the 15 mins change the water coz this will have gone cold for more hot water just

to pop it back in for about a minute and then dry off the rat and try feeding again. this can take a while sometimes it used to take me over an hour to get my first female ball python to eat lol but just keep beeing persistant and if she dunt eat it streight from your hand after 1 hour i whould say leave it in the viv with her for a couple of hours and then see if she has eaten it. some snakes wont eat infront of people as my boa will only eat if she carnt see any 1 lol realy funny. so just keep this in mind try them and let me know if anything worked for you. also try cutting a little hole into the skull of the rat so the brain matter comes out a bit (you may have to squeese the head for this to happen) and that can help attract them because the smell is realy strong to snakes hope this helps let me now plz and if you have any more questions let me now thank you