20 rodents ate in 90 days

[lamar3986]

i ve been keeping a chart of what my snake eats and so far its 1 pinky,11 fuzzies,4 small mice,1 med mice, 2 large mice, and 1 rat pup. my question is this a lot for this time period.

[mr~python]

probably. i calculated it out and on average your snake is getting a meal every four and a half days. you should really only be feeding once a week and the prey items should be slightly smaller then your snakes girth, even more smaller then the girth for adult snakes.

[Kizerk]

well it depends on the size of your snake

[mr~python]

well it depends on the size of your snake

food every 4.5 days is a lot for any size ball python, unless the prey items were really small. they seemed to have gone up in size a lot in 3 months though, so i wouldnt think thats the case.

[dr del]

**tries to count but gives up when he has to remove his socks**


How many of those were multiple feedings? It comes as a surprise to most first time ball keepers just what size of a prey item they should feedin relation to the size of the snake. I assume it's a hatchling ball python yeah? sing out if it isn't - oh and we like pictures

So assuming a hatchling ball it might have went like;

Tried pinky - snake still hungry,wait a week
tried fuzzy - snake still hungry,wait a week
tried 2 fuzzy - snake still hungry, wait a week,
tried 3 fuzzy.... ah well you get the idea


Only thing to make sure of is that you can get enough fuzzy rats if your thinking of using them. Nothing worse than switching an animals diet then realising the store has run out and can't get any for a month. Also was the rat pup smaller than the mice? And did you switch from mice to rats for any particular reason?

The care sheet on this site will give excellent info on how much and what size of prey item. And there are plenty of folks to answer anything it doesn't explain well enough.

And congratulations for keeping the chart - you would be amazed how many people forget then look confused when you ask when it last shed/ate



dr del

[Kizerk]

food every 4.5 days is a lot for any size ball python, unless the prey items were really small. they seemed to have gone up in size a lot in 3 months though, so i wouldnt think thats the case.

well it is possible that he fed several rodents during one feeding, most likely this would not be a baby, but i agree, if it's one rodent per feeding every 4.5 days IS alot

[Sadie]

Fuzzies are tiny, it would almost be necessary to feed multiple prey at each feeding. Hopper mice and rat pups are not that different in size. My baby took her first mouse hopper (with me) on Aug 28 and her first rat pup Sept 14. Once she took 3 pups in 2 days! I switched to (small) weaned this month and she's almost 300g.

As long as your snake is eating on it's own, I don't think you can overfeed it.

I have heard that large infrequent meals are easier on the snake's digestion than smaller frequent meals. That said, I have been feeding the baby every 5 days and am now considering going to weekly.

And I don't feed prey smaller than the snake's girth- equal or slightly bigger. They stretch.

[Freakie_frog]

I understand the need to find out what your snake will eat and how much its needs. I find in my limited experiance that if more that one foor item is need then you need to step up in size as I see you were doing. Now with that said if your snake only eats mice and will not take rats then more than one adult mouse is needed (thats a totaly different thread). But it looks like your snake eats rats so to be safe feed an item as big and up to 1.5 time bigger than you snake is around at its biggest part. My 1300 gram male takes a 100 - 150 gram rat once a week and is just fine. Feeding more than one food item will require you to weight them and get a total weight of food consumed. I mean I feed one 100 gram rat but 5 adult mice might look as big but weigh a little more than that. So if one rat pup leaves a nice lump but if your snake is a little bigger than a rat pup (around) then stepup to a weanling. Its also a good idea to know the weight of the item your feeding because different places might classify there feeders different. My med might be your lrg and so on and you would want to get stuck with a feeder thats to big or to small.

Hope this helps.