I know this reply comes late and your snake is now smashing its food (which is great to know!). If it only helps explain some of what has happened then it is worth posting.
It is difficult to know what the problem is, or was, but it was likely made more complicated by some of the things done. So lets start from the basics of what should be done and why.
Firstly, your method of thawing frozen rodents is not recommended. The safest way to do it is to put gthe frozen carcass in the fridge the day before and to ensure it 100% limp when you pull it out to use it. If you absolutely need them to thaw them the same day, then put them on a benchtop with a tea towel lightly covering them. This can take one to several hours, depending on the prevailing room temperature and air movement. Irrespective, the check that body is totally limp. Then use the zlp-lock bag technique to warm the carcass. Leave it 10 to 20 minutes, depending on size, to ensure it warmed completely through. If you start with water at 40oC that should allow it to cool down a few degrees to the normal body temperature of rodents = 36.5 to 38.5oC i.e. ~ 37oC. Note that some keepers do not use a plastic bag and either dry the rodents off or feed them wet.
Snakes primarily recognise their food items by smell. If a snake has a bad experience with a particular food item, such as it still being partially frozen in the middle, it very quickly learns to associate that with the smell of the item and will avoid future items with the same or similar scent. We can make use of this to do the opposite. Let’s say you want a python to change from mice to rats but it will not accept rats as food. By sowing a a small rat to the end of mouse with a cotton thread, one can get the snake to eat the mouse and then the rat. Two or three meals like this is usually enough to convert it to eating rats on their own. This is known as ‘daisy chaining’.
Pythons in the Antaresia group are renown for stopping feeding during the cooler months of the year, even when heating is maintain at the same level year round. However, first year young are not normally like this. Irrespective, It is something to be aware of for the future, and if it was the problem here then you snake should be getting back to feeding at this current time of year.
Reputable breeders do sell young snakes they have bred until they are established feeders. Do you know what had your snake eaten and how often, prior to you purchasing it. That is what it should ave been offered by you. Given most hatchies are fed roughly weekly, it does no harm to let them skip meal while settling into their new home. However, if they are refusing to eat after a couple of weeks, then it is likely there is something wrong in their environment that is keeping them stressed and not allowing them to settle into natural behaviour. That’s when you start checking environmental parameters of your enclosure versus what they they were in and what is recommended. Once these are corrected, then feeding should resume within a few weeks, unless some other factor has intervened in the meantime.
Live feeding should not be necessary. It indicates thatsomething was done that should not have been. Tease feeding, where you gently rub the rodent along the side of the snake’s face should only be needed a couple of times or so. Wiggling the rodent in front of the snake is all that should then be needed. You nshould only need to continue that for any length of time for highly reluctant feeders. Otherwise people who bred pythons would need to spend an inordinate amount of time just bfeeding their animals. I assume you are not holding fod items with your fingers. That is a definite NO NO. Forceps or long tweezers are suitable. What I have found works really well is the long pick-up /retrieving tool they sell in automotive shops that is used grabbing things like dropped nuts or bolts from car engines. The long and flexible nature of them allows a clutched rodent to wabble naturally with almost no effort from you.
