I need to know....

[Pruitt]

Ok from what i read i am mostlikely under feeding my snake. It is two and a half years old and probably two and a half feet long... maybe a little more or less... lol you know they never stay straight. the guy who gave him to me said one mouse every two weeks. and after reading i'm finding that is not enuf. i gave him one 7 days after i got him home and settled in. that was friday. and he ate it up no problem. and after reading i decided to drop a smaller mouse in today. and it only spent about 2 seconds on the floor before it was gone.


so my question is. How much should i be feeding my snake? I don't want to over feed but i def. don't want to underfeed...


thanks in advance for any information...

[daniel1983]

Feed it one rodent per week. The rodent size should be approximately the size of the girth of the snake. However, I would shoot for slightly smaller than the girth of your ball python and not feed anything over the size of a small rat.

[JLC]

A 2.5 year old bp?? Should probably be eating a small to medium rat once a week. That's my take on it, anyhow, after much reading and discussion.

[Pruitt]

thanks guys. well i have 5 mice left well maybe 7 if i can find the other two that escaped so i should have plenty of food for it.


thanks
pruitt

[tigerlily]

If you want you can feed two mice, once a week. Feeding multiples is fine, especially if your bp won't switch to rats. I prefer rats because they are easier for me. Although, I have one girl who gets mice since that's what she'll eat. I think the best thing is to offer an appropriate amount of food once a week.

[Pruitt]

lol i opened the mouse box today to give them some water and food. and the snake was in his hide... i had the box open for maybe a min. and he was out and on the prowl... lol can they smell that good?

[tigerlily]

OH YEAH!! I only have to bring a ziplock bag into the room, and they are all going nuts in 5 minutes. They have an awesome sense of smell. It's amazing.

[frankykeno]

Oh yep they can sure pick up the scent well! We had an incident awhile back when Kyna was still in quarantine in our bedroom. I had her tub open and my husband walked into the room with a p/k mouse on the hemostats. Kyna literally stood up on her tail and tried to go over my shoulder toward the smell. Mike was easily at least 5 to 6 feet away with that mouse and she knew it was coming in LOL. Startled the heck outta me! Even though Kyna didn't try to strike at me I learned a good lesson that day about getting between a hungry BP and a warm rodent

[elevatethis]

Mice, rats, whatever.....for a pet feeding mice is A-Ok. Nice thing about rats is that they are quite hearty compared to mice and make much better (cost effective) meals if you have breeding aspirations. That said, even a "mouser" that feeds consistently will put on enough weight to breed in most cases. You'll just have to feed multiple mice.

1 or 2 mice every 7 days is certainly not under-feeding. You may not be getting them to their maximum weight possible in a given time frame, but you are certainly not starving them by any stretch...

[Adam_Wysocki]

2 mice every 7 days. If he gets to a point where he doesn't seem too excited about the second mouse, cut back to one for a little while.

-adam