We had been feeding our snake small adult mice and decided to switch over to similarly size rat which translated to a rat that was somewhere between a fuzzy and a pup.

We have had her a little over a month and have had zero feeding issues. She is eating every 5 days without incident . She has been fed all live prey thus far. With mice she is extremely efficient - she has them coiled, dead and fully eaten within 10-15 minutes. She is always seems super hungry afterwards so we figured with the higher fat content in rats she would be more satisfied.

She was extremely interested in the rat we offered her, she struck it but didn’t coil as tightly as before. She stayed coiled for longer than normal and when she released to reposition herself the little rat was still breathing and slightly twitching. This didn’t seem to phase her at all and swallowed it and slithered off to her favorite hide.

I, of course, started googling and was horrified to read stories about snakes eating prey that was still alive and then said prey killing the snake on the way to its stomach. Considering the little rat was “mostly” dead I am not too worried about this particular time for the snake, but I don’t want this to become a trend.

My ultimate goal was to switch her over to young rats now, then switch her to f/t rats. I have read that switching a snake from a young, not very mobile rodent to frozen thawed is easier than switch from highly mobile prey to something I am dancing around with tongs.

My question to all of you: do I follow my instincts and revert back to mice or do I try another fuzzy/pup? I tend to lean towards mice but that is because this is my daughters second beep (I do all of the care, she’s 9). The first one didn’t make it through the first 3 weeks of us having it. The vet said it was likely something pre-existing (tested negative for parasites) and that our husbandry was good. Even though we were reassured by a professional I am still quite paranoid and try to ensure this little beep is as happy as a captive snake can be. I would hate to lose her because of something like this, especially since she has been doing so well with mice.





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