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Feeding very young bps?

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  • 10-11-2014, 05:34 PM
    Miranda2
    Feeding very young bps?
    Okay so since Ive had my baby ball pythons Ive had a hard time finding live food. I managed to get a couple of large hopper mice the first few feeds. I am rural and we have one petstore an hour away.
    My female is 96 grams and my male is 88grams. Ive only fed them 4 times , Ive had them a month.
    Now so far they will not take frozen thawed. But today I fed them adult mice, the smallest I could find. Is there any problem with this as long as they get them down? Both are quick to kill and eat the mice so far. Im a bit worried as the females mouse was biggish.

    Ive started a mouse colony but so far no babies so it will be awhile until I can get hoppers.
  • 10-11-2014, 05:49 PM
    somnambulant
    The rule that I go by is that the food should be the same amount of thickness as the snake at its biggest point. If your mouse is thicker than the snake, then you're feeding too big. I've seen a lot of tips about feeding F/T, such as warming up the head in water before feeding it or exposing brain matter. Have you tried looking up rat breeders on Craigslist? There might be some in your area or at least closer than your pet store. When we don't have enough of the right size rats in our colony at home, we'll get some extras from a breeder to hold on to for a couple of weeks and just house them on a separate rack (though we know the conditions that this breeder's feeders are in and aren't really too worried, it's just for extra safety).
  • 10-11-2014, 06:13 PM
    ARBallMorphs
    i think you shouldnt worrie to much atm.

    it is ok for the mice to be a bit bigger then the the snake it his/her biggest point.

    i feed all my bp's a meal that is about 1.5 times their body width.
  • 10-12-2014, 10:49 AM
    Miranda2
    I was worried she might regurge with this last one. I havent checked on her yet to see but I know she killed it the minute I put it in her tub. These guys are voracious,. I would estimate this mouse was easily 1.6 times her body size if not a bit more.It looked smaller at the petstore.Im not good at estimating size.

    I recently made an order from rodent pro and ordered rat pups but they are too big just yet for the bps. Last time they were super small so go figure. I should gotten some rat fuzzies too. For when they finally eat the frozen thawed.
  • 10-12-2014, 11:55 AM
    somnambulant
    Re: Feeding very young bps?
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Miranda2 View Post
    I was worried she might regurge with this last one. I havent checked on her yet to see but I know she killed it the minute I put it in her tub. These guys are voracious,. I would estimate this mouse was easily 1.6 times her body size if not a bit more.It looked smaller at the petstore.Im not good at estimating size.

    I recently made an order from rodent pro and ordered rat pups but they are too big just yet for the bps. Last time they were super small so go figure. I should gotten some rat fuzzies too. For when they finally eat the frozen thawed.

    I'd check for a regurge, but otherwise, I'm sure everything will be fine. If it was truly too big for for your girl, she would have spit it out after realizing it didn't fit. :) I've fed rats that I thought were too big, and they either spit it back out midway through or just looked a little too stuffed and uncomfortable. It happens. You'll get better at estimating size!
  • 10-13-2014, 01:46 PM
    Crimson Moon V
    Re: Feeding very young bps?
    Just recently I had fed my 2 baby ball pythons live mice because the pet store was out of fuzzies. (they are about the same size as your BPs.) It stretched them out pretty good. They seem to be doing fine though. Just give them an extra day before you handle them. I figure they need a little bit of extra time to digest the large meal. I just didn't want to hold them because honestly it looked uncomfortable for them. If they keep it down just let them poop it out and they will be fine.
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