Is he big enough for small rats?

[Shamri]

Atticus is close to 600 grams now, and I've been feeding him 2 adult mice per week due to the shortage of jumbo mice. Two questions:

1. Is he big enough to graduate to small rats? I haven't been able to find the weanling size at the local stores

2. Are there any other viable prey items of decent size? I have been struggling with the idea of feeding rats simply because they are such great pets. I realize this is somewhat ironic given how much bacon I eat, but I'm going to ask anyways

Thanks

[Mustang5]

Hey, he should be ok on small rats. My 700g female has been on them since she was 500g and has never had a problem. As for the different food sources the only one i can think of is ASFs. I don't have a lot of experience with those so i will let somebody else give you some advice on those.

[ballpythonluvr]

Your snake is big enough to take a small rat. My female normal is a little over 700 grams and is slamming f/t small rats. I used to feel bad about feeding live rodents and f/t alike but then I one day realized that snakes have to to eat too.

[beeze]

Hey, he should be ok on small rats. My 700g female has been on them since she was 500g and has never had a problem. As for the different food sources the only one i can think of is ASFs. I don't have a lot of experience with those so i will let somebody else give you some advice on those.

I had a friend who had a couple BPs and raised/bred rats and ASFs and from what I learned, ASFs are much more aggressive than rats. You would most definitely need to feed the ASFs f/t or freshly killed.

[200xth]

2. Are there any other viable prey items of decent size? I have been struggling with the idea of feeding rats simply because they are such great pets. I realize this is somewhat ironic given how much bacon I eat, but I'm going to ask anyways

ASF's, gerbils, chicks, and quails.

No guarantee your snake will eat all, or any, of them, but you can try them.

[Tsanford]

Yeah try feeding rats, no bigger than fates part of snakes body.

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[JoshSloane]

If you can get your bp to consistently take f/t rats consider yourself lucky and stick with that. No sense in getting them hooked on something like chicks or gerbils. Rats will always be the easiest food source to come by.

[Shamri]

I was slowly coming to that conclusion myself. And now that I am (mostly) relieved of my guilt, I am starting to get excited for his next feeding This will be his first time with rats of any sort.