Effects of Not Eating

[changelingash]

Hello again everyone. You may remember me as the one who had a 7-month-old spotted python who refused to eat for nearly two months before finally being given live.

A little update: After a few live feedings to give her some bulk, I put her back onto frozen/thawed, which after taking the first feed, she went off again, and it took about a month and a half for her to finally take a frozen/thawed one again, causing a second 6 week fast. After three feedings, she went off food again for 3 weeks before her next accepted meal.

In summary, she had two 6-7 week fasts and one 3 week fast in her first 11 months of life.

Now that I think(fingers crossed) that she is finally eating well, I was curious if all this fasting was going to have long-term effects on her. When I tried to research the long-term effects myself, I only found tips on how to get them to eat. Does anyone know if this is going to stunt her growth permanently or cause her a poor quality of life? I don't want her to suffer for her having a third of her first year refusing to eat.

She is still very small for being a year old(pic enclosed), so she is clearly stunted in her growth at the moment, but will she bounce back and grow once she's nourished?

[Pythonguy1]

As long as she's eating fine now I don't see any life long effects apart from the fact that she's a bit small for her age. Just feed her up (weekly at this age) make sure her temps are correct and monitor her health and she should be fine.

[changelingash]

Thank you so much, I'll be keeping her on her steady feeding schedule!

[chairman]

I agree. I've seen a handful of snakes that suffered long term harm caused by underfeeding at a young age (suspected culprit was organ damage from malnutrition) but it seems to be very rare. I think snakes have, generally, adapted quite well to fluctuations in prey availability and can handle reasonable periods of not eating.