How big of a meal should I feed...

[mikeraach]

I have a 4 year old male thats 40" long and weighs ~950g. Until recently, he would refuse to eat rats. I used to feed him 3 mice (20g each) but now I'm feeding him medium rats at 40g each. I fed him 2 at once which seemed to give him a good bulge, but I'm wondering if I should try a large 100g rat. I feed him every 7 days with smaller meals and after the 80g meal i waited almost 14 days.

Whats better, feed him small meals weekly or a larger one every 2 weeks? And whats a good amount? 10% of his body weight?

[juddb]

small meals weekly. It seems like if you leave them a little hungry the feeding response stays consistant....

[JLC]

A small-small rat (the 40g you mentioned is ok) offered once a week is PLENTY of food for him for the rest of his life. Just keep up with that schedule and you'll be golden.

[Kagez28]

what you feed to your snake is up to you. a bp can live on multiple mice every week, or a small small rat every week. just depends on what the snake will eat. if he is refusing rats, i don't know if trying a 100g rat would work. there are some tricks like scenting the rat with mice you could try, but i would go with what you have available and what your snake will eat.

what is better for a snake is often debated. some say rats are better some say mice and rats are equal. Adam (8 ball pythons) feeds nothing larger then a small small rat to his adults, and he has some top notch animals.


EDIT: I need to learn to type faster.

[mikeraach]

Ok 1 40g a week sounds good to me. I just wanted to make sure it was enough cause I don't want to keep him hungry, and I don't want to make him fat either.

I tried scenting rats with mice bedding (I used to work at petco so this was no problem) and he still didn't go for the rats. Whats more interesting about this is when he was younger he ate rats, then around November '04 he stopped eating. Refused his food. At that time I was mainly feeding live, but got tired of taking the rat back when he wouldn't eat and got frozen (also don't want any rat taking a bite out of Dex). After a few months of not eating I tried mice and then he ate with no problem. Not sure if it was something with rats or if he was just fasting as I read that some do that in the winter months.

He hasn't fasted during winter since. I used to feed him thawed to room temp rats/mice but he never had good aim and sometimes he would take a while to find his food. Now I slightly warm my frozen rats with a heat lamp or under the tank heater. He hits them nearly 100% of the time now and is very quick to find his food dangling. Seems as those heat pits play a BIG role in them seeing their prey.

[AzureN1ght]

My Auryn decided that he didn't want to eat rats--and I ordered "Jumbo" sized mice (33-40g each) from Big Cheese and he gets one of those a week, instead of multiple small mice. He seems like a happy boy If your boy just likes mice, don't fear! It took me a good 6 weeks to decide that Auryn just wasn't going to take rats for me.

[mikeraach]

Woh I didn't know mice got that big. I like to pick up a few frozen at a time at the local petco and they only have 20g ones. But now that he's eating rats fine there's no need to go back to mice.