Appropriately-sized meals

[wolftrap]

Kira is growing great; I don't weigh her, but I will be getting a food scale and beginning to use it within the next couple of weeks.

I have her on a weekly feeding schedule where I fed her one fuzzy rat every Friday. At first this would satiate her and she would hide for a few days to digest, but I suppose as she grew she began to display what looked like signs of hunger, roaming around and sniffing everything. I finally got a thermostat for my UTH, as well as a thermometer-hygrometer to measure ambient temps/humidity, and her husbandry is fine. Plenty of water, plenty of hiding space; she just seemed hungry.

So since she was eating fuzzies, I decided to go to the store and buy her the next size up. In the freezer, they only had pinkie, fuzzy, small, medium, and large rats (and jumbo)... According to the charts I've seen, it's supposed to go pinkie, fuzzy, pups, weaned, and THEN s-xl. I opened up the small rats to check, and when stretched out, they were a SMIDGE bigger than Kira's thickest circumference. I decided to try it.

I thawed in the fridge for several hours, then warmed in hot tap water for about 15 mins (like always), and offered it to her. She struck it immediately and constricted, then left it alone and looked like she was losing interest. I thought maybe it was too cool or it was too big, because about five mins passed and she would just circle it, biting occasionally, sniffing the air, etc. She did finally eat it completely, but it took several minutes longer than normal (naturally).

I know it's a bigger rat, and thus she took much longer to assess and swallow, but I want to know if this is a good size for her (just a TIIIINY bit bigger than her thickest circumference)? Is it normal for a snake to take this long when the size of the prey graduates? Should I back-pedal a little and give her a pup or weaned pup before I return to the small rats?

thanks in advance.