new diet for my female.

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Originally Posted by dr del

Hi,

I'm not sure I know what the question is...... But that never stopped me before so here we go. :D

It's better to feed her multiple prey items at one sitting than to constantly have her digesting by offering every second day I think.

Their digestive system is designed to shut down between meals in a way mamals cannot - there was a good post explaining the process somewhere but I cannot find the link at the moment.

What meals was she refusing aside from the rats she doesn't want? Has she recently only wanted three mice or something similar?

It might be an idea to weigh the 4 mice she would normally eat to compare to the 10-15% of bodyweight rule - though that rules doesn't really apply once they get up to near breeding size for me. I feed nothing larger than a small rat to any of my snakes following a post made on here that this makes for a more consistent feeding pattern.

Small rats for me are around the 60g mark but it varies a bit depending on supplier.


dr del

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You need to find this info for Big Gunns because BG is not so sure a bunch of smaller meals isn't better...or at least just as good.

BG knows one thing for sure. Your animal will grow faster with a bunch of smaller meals. Now is this bad? BG is not so sure. BG hasn't heard of any large breeders complaining of their animals dropping dead at an early age, so who knows????

Now BG knows we are different than snakes, but a lot of smaller meals are better for us than one large one. It takes a lot longer to digest a large meal, so the animals digestive system is working harder. BG doesn't know which one is "best" for sure, but he does know that there doesn't seem to be a problem with Balls eating many small meals.

BG will also point this out. He's said this before. About a month or so after baby Balls come in each year the "Bush babies" start coming in. These are babies that were born in the wild and were caught....unlike the imported fresh hatch ones where they were taken from the eggs on a "farm. Well....these "Bush babies" are huge compared to the others that came in straight from the egg and BG has fed weekly for a month or so. This tells BG that these snakes are eating everything in sight in the wild. If something passes their way....they eat it. They don't say to themselves "gotta wait a week or my heart is gonna work too hard...you can pass by Mr. Mouse". They eat that mouse.

So what's BG's final verdict. BG believes you can feed your Ball Python either way and it will be fine. Think about it. It's a Ball Python...it knows when it's full. It won't eat if it is.:gj:

Hi,

Yes - we're trying to avoid it stopping eating. :P

Seriously though.

I understand the theory of smaller, but more regular, meals - that's what I am doing with a small rat every 5-7 days rather than a medium or large rat really. I have found that I do get a lot less fasts compared to my old style of medium rats every 7 days. Whether that means fasts are triggered more by short term feelings of being "full" rather than an overall level of feeding could be a fun thing to find out - it's beyond my ability to find out though. :rolleyes:

But I think feeding every other day is probably taking things a bit too far. This isn't a baby snake and I'm not sure how the metabolism changes in regards to a 1200g snake that is still growing but not at the same rate as a hatchling. Every 5 days should definately be fine but I'm not certain I'd feel happy feeding mine every 3 days for example after they got a bit of growth on them.

I am curious to hear more about the bush babies though as I have never dealt with any of those. Might be a UK thing that they do not get imported or I may have simply never asked the right company - either is possible. :)

The WC ones we tend to see over here are about 700g+ and are a bit of a nightmare to get started, especially if you feed F/T which most people over here do fairly explusively.

Could it simply be that, in the wild, any burrow a baby BP investigates containing food will have a whole litter in it an they will eat all of them at one sitting? Or do they camp in the burrow and eat them over a period of days or just eat their fill and then move on?

Just wondering how the feeding/ length of time in the burrow would be affected by the adults of the prey species etc.

Is there a season where they will be finding loads of small mammals followed by leaner times or is the level of small sized rodents fairly constant? I ask because if the rodent size is seasonal then the bush babies may have to gorge themselves at the start of their life in order to be large enough to tackle the rodents available out of season.

So, while they are intially larger than the ones we are keeping, ours continue to grow at their lower rate but without any seasonal drops in growth rate and actually end up being at least the same size if not larger?

I don't know if anyone has done any research into that though.

But, since I can't find the post on this site, here are a few external links with what looks to be the same info.

Link 1.

Link 2.

I look forward to hearing your take on them. :)


dr del

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Originally Posted by sookieball

ok so she used to eat 4 lg mice on feeding day and wont eat rats because one bit her and she just got scared i guess. and ive tried prekilled rats and it was a no go.

so i have been feeding her one every other day.

she seems to be happy with that and doesnt refuse the meal like she did before.

do you think its too much?


oh and she's 1200 grams and a pretty good legnth of 3ft7inchs.

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Duplicated threads were merged and moved in the appropriate section :gj:

Dr. Del

i remember reading the same thread about snakes and digestion. they basically shut down everything thats not needed for digestion and everything else like heart, BP, digestion jumps up to something like 200% so the body is working overload to digest quickly. i also agree with feeding once every 7. in my not so expert opinion is better on their little hearts

The Bush babies come in around 200 grams or so, not those nightmare 700 gram ones. These Bush babies do much better, but BG still prefers to have a fresh hatch baby. They are much less likely to have any parasites.


BG has no idea what way is best, but he knows what he has seen from personal experience. It doesn't seem to bother them to feed them smaller meals more often. Which one is best??? BG has no idea.....and he's too lazy to do a scientific study on it.:D

thanks for everyone for their opinions!!!
and advice.