My bp ate again!!!

It's been a week since I got my ball to eat for the first time so I had my brother pick me up a feeder mouse(thats what I told him to get). Apperantly the guy at the petstore said my snake can eat a small rat and gave him one instead of the feeder I asked for. I heard so many horror stories about how rats fight and that so I sat beside the tank as I let the rat go in the cage. The rat runs into my bp's hide and I hear this long loud hiss and then a squeak and no more noise. Didnt even take a minute for my snake to eat the rat. Oh yea my bp is about 4 feet now so I know it was big enough for a small rat just had so many problems getting it to eat that I was sticking to feeder mice since I knew it would eat that. Looks like its a small rat every week for my bp now!!!!

Sounds good! You might want to take the hide out of there in the future. I would think the BP could have been scared by the rat running in to his hide. Luckily his reaction was to strike and kill rather than cower and possibly get scratched or bitten. Congrats on getting your BP on rats! At 4 ft, he should definitely be on small rats.

I'm going to disagree with Jamie. :sabduel: I think you should keep the hide in there. There is always the chance that the rat will run into the hide, but I think Balls feel more comfortable hunting and ambushing from the safety of their hides. I don't think it would have much of a difference to the rat if it ran into the hide or not, and most of the time they seem oblivious to the presence of the snake until it's too late.

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Originally Posted by jglass38

You might want to take the hide out of there in the future.

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Not that I want to ding you twice in one day (cages vs. racks), but I always suggest leaving hides inside of the enclosure if you're going to choose to feed live.

Hides give your ball python a natural ambush point to attack their prey from and an escape from the rodent in case the animal is just not interested in feeding that day. A ball python open and exposed in a cage with a rat is really not a good idea if you can avoid it.

In addition to leaving hides in the cage, a couple of good ideas for feeding live are to "pre-scent the room" by leaving the rodent in the room on or near the snakes enclosure for at least 30 minutes before feeding so that the snake can smell the rodent and get into "feeding mode" ... also, if your hide is big enough to fit your snake AND a small rat, it's probably too big for your ball python. ;)

Hope this helps.

-adam

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Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki

Not that I want to ding you twice in one day (cages vs. racks), but I always suggest leaving hides inside of the enclosure if you're going to choose to feed live.

Hides give your ball python a natural ambush point to attack their prey from and an escape from the rodent in case the animal is just not interested in feeding that day. A ball python open and exposed in a cage with a rat is really not a good idea if you can avoid it.

In addition to leaving hides in the cage, a couple of good ideas for feeding live are to "pre-scent the room" by leaving the rodent in the room on or near the snakes enclosure for at least 30 minutes before feeding so that the snake can smell the rodent and get into "feeding mode" ... also, if your hide is big enough to fit your snake AND a small rat, it's probably too big for your ball python. ;)

Hope this helps.

-adam

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Consider me dinged twice today (although the first was me not paying attention :) ) Go with Adam's advice. I don't feed live and will therefore no longer dole out information (or in this case misinformation). Consider me flogged

I dont remove anything from the tub when I feed or the snake jsut cowers and hides. I made the mistake of removing the hide the last time I tried to feed and the snake just slithered away from the mouse. I just put the hide in yesterday and found out it was to big but right now I just wnat to let the snake digest the rat before I remove that hide with a smaller one. I dont wanna a regurge but I am going to replace it with a smaller one.

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Originally Posted by jglass38

Consider me dinged twice today (although the first was me not paying attention :) ) Go with Adam's advice. I don't feed live and will therefore no longer dole out information (or in this case misinformation). Consider me flogged

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:groinkick See, Adam is even holding up two fingers!

My only addition to the advice here would be to get into a feeding day (night) routine with the snake. Do the same routine over and over each week and make it a different routine than the normal everyday one. Our snakes seem to know by our feeding day routine (plus their own instincts kicking in) that's it's time to get down to business and are more than ready to eat by the time the live prey is introduced.

Heck our little 8 month old male BP, Malachi, will be parked on top of his warm side hide, in full strike position by the morning of feeding day and gawd help the silly human that doesn't offer him his yummy rat pups! He'll take a jab or two at me that day (though is a darling any other day) but he knows it's time to eat and is an impatient baby LOL. Gotta love a snake with a strong feeding response!

I have been offering food every Sat at around 7pm or so and for the last 2 weeks it has eaten with in minutes.

Sounds great! They seem to do really well with routines they can recognize. Course now you'll be getting that glare from the enclosure by Saturday morning...you know the one...."hey LADY! hey! hey! over here! ya got my rat!!! gimme my rat...now!" :giggle: