accessing size of f/t feeders

My Husband and I recently decided that the kiddos where finally old enough for us to get back into owning snakes and we purchased 2 royals. I and he in the past have owned and dealt with various pythons and boas. Neither of us however have until now used f/t food and what I am finding is that the size variation is slightly different everywhere. So my question is our two girls are 17 and 20 in long and about as big around as a Quarter normally when i lived in a bigger city I would have simply gone down to the local store and picked out an appropriate sized mouse or rat and fed it. When buying f/t what size food would be best for our new girls when buying in a 50 qty bulk our local pet stores carry mice and then x lrg rats so not really a great selection in the f/t department. They are consuming 1 hopper every 4-5 days at present and have thus far declined striking at a second although the next day they are displaying their i'm hungry behavior (running their head up and down the section of the cage that they are fed in ( while their custom cage is being built ) that smells like mouse. I am leery at this stage of moving them up to small rats given the weight of the small rats that they would be to large so should i move to adult mice?

sorry if it seems a bit rambled off i am accustomed to the best answers come from the most informed question.

Usually you weigh the snake, and follow either the 10 or 15 percent of their body weight rule. Whatever 10 or 15 percent of their body weight is, is the weight in feeder you should feed. Usually bulk shippers have a weight range each size (pinkie, crawler, hopper, small, etc) will come in. Just choose the range fitting your snake and go for it.

Sent from my SAMSUNG Galaxy SIII using Tapatalk 2

great idea except that i have not yet bought a scale to weigh them in we have only had them for about 3 weeks but I think I will skip the black friday madness and look into buying one on saturday or sunday best recommendations on type of scale?

I use a food scale sold at most Walmarts and this reads out in grams, just like feeders should be labeled. It's also good to have on hand to monitor growth or weight loss.

Sent from my SAMSUNG Galaxy SIII using Tapatalk 2

For this purpose any scale that weighs from a few grams to 5000 will be fine. It doesn't need to be accurate just able to repeat the same object at the same weight. It is the relation of snake to food that matters. Unless you are selling them there is no need for high accuracy. I find I get feeders and have a variation in sizes so ordering the correct size I usually get some a bit small and some a bit big. I often break the package down to individual animal (or pairs one for each of yours) wright the weight on the out side and return them to the freezer. I'll start with the smaller ones and work to the larger ones. If they are all manageable I mix it up a smaller one one week the larger the next, rather than feed all the biggest ones and then be light for a while.

Okay. It sounds like your ball pythons are pretty young. I would start off with F/T rat fuzzies. I would suggest you get a scale for them because it will make this a lot easier on you. I feed F/T rat fuzzies until they are about 150g (roughly the size of a half dollar) and then switch them to rat pups until they are about 350g. I am feeding my nearly 400g male (about as big around as a clementine orange) weaned rats. Now, unless you find a reptile specialty shop that sells these size feeders, it's nearly impossible to find them at chain pet stores (Petco, Petsmart specifically) because they sell all size mice and only small, medium, and large rats.

So, here are two options for you if you don't have a reptile specialty shop near you that sells feeders:

1. Feed mice...in that case your babies can probably take hopper mice (Petsmart sells these as small mice) for a few weeks, then feed them weaned mice (Petsmart sells these as medium mice) and the after a few more weeks, feed them adults (Petsmart sells them as large mice) . When they get the size of a clementine, go ahead and feed them jumbo mice. Then, once they are big enough to eat small rats, you can try to switch them over to eating rats. Now, it's often suggested to start them on rats early because sometimes they are more finicky about switching to rats when they are older. If you don't want to do that, I would suggest option 2.

2. Bulk order your rodents and stick them in the freezer. Now, shipping is a little bit expensive (they usually do priority shipping and package the box with dry ice) so in order to get your money's worth, you will need to bulk buy and store them in your freezer (I use the top part of a mini-fridge to keep the rodents out of my main freezer because my family is a little grossed out by it). When you bulk order, you want to buy SMALL bags. RodentPro sells bags of 100 whereas MiceDirect, Big Cheese Rodent Factory, Loxahatchee Rodents, Feeder Source, and some others will sell in bags as small as 10-25. Because you're only feeding two snakes, I'd buy a 25 count bag of rat fuzzies, two bags 25 bag of rat pups, and 3 bags of weaned rats to start off with. Now, because ball pythons grow at different rates, it's very hard to bulk buy. Because I guesstimated wrong initially, I have a freezer full of rat fuzzies/rat pups that my girls have outgrown. But instead of wasting them, I feed my girls a rat pup every 3-4 days since they should be on weaned rats by now. You can always feed two prey items of a SMALLER size in order to use up the rodents that you have. That way, none of your rodents that you order will go to waste.

I hope that helps a little bit!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kitedemon

For this purpose any scale that weighs from a few grams to 5000 will be fine. It doesn't need to be accurate just able to repeat the same object at the same weight. It is the relation of snake to food that matters. Unless you are selling them there is no need for high accuracy. I find I get feeders and have a variation in sizes so ordering the correct size I usually get some a bit small and some a bit big. I often break the package down to individual animal (or pairs one for each of yours) wright the weight on the out side and return them to the freezer. I'll start with the smaller ones and work to the larger ones. If they are all manageable I mix it up a smaller one one week the larger the next, rather than feed all the biggest ones and then be light for a while.

---

Thank you with all the kitchen scales available that puts more perspective on which type to choose. It has been about 15 years since I owned or worked with any snakes and even longer since I handled babies so I am a bit out of practice on growth rate. by my best guess these girls should be at least 5-6 months old and 4-5 months old their records where despicable they where being fed only one pinkie or fuzzie per week and had refused food about 85% of the time. So I am confident that they are currently underweight but we already have them eating regularly. Not to many places to get snakes locally and I am out of the loop on who is reputable when ordering online so we went with the pet store option :(
Any tips or tricks recommended are appreciated lots of new things on the market now a days

Where in Texas are you?

Where in Texas are you? I'm in the Houston area and I have extra bags of fuzzies/pups that i can part with (as I said before, my girls are too big for them). I wouldn't mind meeting you somewhere. I also know some places around here that sell feeders, again, if you are in the Houston area. I order my rodents from Loxahatchee Rodents and I LOVE them!

So against my normal behavior I decided to go out on black Friday just waited until yesterday evening to get a scale. As recommended I got one that will weigh up to 5000 g or 10 lbs and we weighed our girls and now it has me extremely worried I know all snakes grow at their own rate however I am sure there is an average we have estimated that our girls are between 4-6 months old assuming they where no older than 1 month old by the time the pet store we got them from got them one was gotten by the pet store in mid July and the other in late august. and as I assumed they are definitely small they only way just under 85 g according to this new scale so either the new scale is way off or they are way under weight other than weight these girls are healthy no sings of any distress breathing is all normal and fecal's and urates have been good so should I go ahead and keep them on hoppers and keep offering them the one they will eat every 5 days or should I bump it up to one every 3 for a couple of weeks to bring their weight up?