He's acting hungry-- Would it hurt?

[Archimedes]

I just fed Magnus on Monday, a small rat, and he did a big poop late that night. He's acting hungry again today-- would it hurt to feed him the adult mouse I have left over from sizing his prey up? I'm making a food run for all the animals this weekend, so I know he could feasibly wait until next week to feed, but I have it, and he seems to want something. I know he's hitting a growth spurt too-- last weigh-in was 229, a full 50g up from the time before.

[Annarose15]

Depends on your definition of a small rat. The general definition of a small rat is 50-80g, which is pretty large for a BP that small. If he had a really big poop, that's another sign that you could actually be feeding meals that are too large. I would drop him back to ~30g weanlings every 5 days (or every 7, if it's a pain to get feeders more often). It won't hurt him to feed the mouse, but you're probably just wasting nutrients that will get pooped out.

[Archimedes]

Alright, thank you! There's no store around here who supplies anything between adult mouse and small rat though, at least for F/T feeders. And I'd rather not take him back onto mice until he gets up to size, because that's what kept him small in the first place, he never grew much with mice. Hrm. I'll do some digging and maybe hit the next expo that comes around for some local F/T.

[jackiee]

I would stick to a 5 to 7 day feeding plan, and feed him 12 to 15% of its body weight so he will put weight on slowly and keep him healthy.

[rossi46]

The general definition of a small rat is 50-80g, which is pretty large for a BP that small.

I was going to say... if you follow the 10% - 15% rule that's recommended, even a small small rat at 50g would be the biggest prey (15%) you'd want to give a bp weighing 340g. If the small rat was in the 70g range than that is too big for your snake. If you were being more conservative and feeding your snake about 12% of its body weight, then you're talking a 30g rat (either a large-ish pup, or small-ish weaned rat).

Something that I read recently in a book about green tree pythons, but almost certainly applies to bp's as well, is that in the wild these snakes don't eat on any kind of consistent basis. The author relates stories from a few different scientists who were doing field studies, and it turns out that almost all wild-collected GTPs were on the thinner side, and probably ate about once per month.

I'd have to agree with other forum members who say we tend to "over-feed" our snakes in comparison to what they'd be doing in the wild.