rats vs. mice

Ok cool thanks for the advice......that being said, do you have any explanation for my female bp that came off of a fast with a small mouse and immediately ate a f/t rat right after? I already know she's a wierd snake but that situation just confuses me.

i always thought you should feed your bp every 7 to 10 days. well if your feeding mice you can feed more often but when you start feeding rats one every 7 to 10 days

Just as sometimes they can be imprint feeders, sometimes they are just really hungry! Each ball python can very be different. I have some that will eat a gerbil, rat, and mouse all on the same day, I have others that only eat mice, some that only eat dark colored rats, etc.

She was the one that ate the really big rat right? .... If so, now she's feeling better and wants to EAT!!! That's a good thing, she'll probably be a good feeder like that for you for a long time. Keep the meals on the smaller side and you shouldn't have a problem.

-adam

Ok a small rat weighs in around 50-75 grams....which is about what an adult bp should take in per week under normal circumstances....so I look at it like this: feed 50-75 grams of rodent every 7 days. Whether you do that with mice, rats, gerbils, children, whatever, does that sound about right?

Ummmm .... I'm really not that technical about it ... I let the snake tell me what it needs.

I don't think that you can boil it down to a perfect equation. You just have to observe your snakes behavior and figure out what works best.

For an adult ball python, start with small rats and see how it does. If the day after feeding day your snake is cruising around the cage every week, you might try 2 small rats and see what happens. I have some snakes that take 2 meals every other week and one meal the rest of the time. There are no "rules", each snake is different. The fun part is figuring your snake out!

-adam

has anyone tried thawing a rat and a mouse in the same bag??
has it worked?
is there any other way to scent a rat with a mouse besides finding mouse bedding to keep the rat in?

thanks

Yes, people do that, they say it works very well.

You dont have to get mouse bedding, sometimes just rubbing the mouse on the rat will work just fine.

Um but thats way easier than having a rat AND a mouse and only feeding one of them off....bedding doesn't require a seperate rodent......

nice way of thinking about it and cheaper

Wow i didn't know that a snake would eat more then one mouse at once. I fugured that once they went through the trouble to get once mouse down they wouldn't think about eating again right away. Learn something new everyday...