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Re: 5 Month Food Strike
The feeding guidelines are correct. A ball python should eat a single prey item roughly 10% of its weight every 10-14 days. Male ball pythons, for whatever reason, don't seem to require as much food as females; I alternate between offering my male ball python small rats, smaller medium rats, and medium rats.
However, your python isn't eating. So the guidelines go out the window just a little bit.
The reason you attempt to feed a smaller prey item is because the prey is less threatening to the snake. It is less threatening because a smaller rat will put up less of a fight (even though you're probably feeding pre-killed) and less threatening because the meal won't greatly interfere with the snake's ability to respond to fight/flight situations. Hopefully after one or two smaller meals your snake will get back to eating appropriately sized meals.
A couple personal anecdotes, I had a king snake that would eat rats a couple weeks during the summer but was otherwise afraid of them. The snake would take mice the rest of the year.
I bred my carpet pythons a couple years ago. Post lay, my female didn't want to take a rat; she acted afraid of it. This is quite odd as carpet pythons are eat first, ask questions later kind of snakes. I offered her a mouse and that one tiny meal put food in her belly and put her on track to feel comfortable feeding on rats again. (Note, don't offer a ball python a mouse, they can get 'addicted' to them and refuse to eat rats. Since ball pythons won't take multiple prey, a mouse only diet isn't feasible.)
Hope this helps.
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