How do you feed your Snake?

This is what I do:

For F/T, I have a screen top aquarium cage (I know I know, it's not an ideal BP cage. I just have no budget yet) and a heat lamp, so I put the frozen rat under the heat lamp and let the heat lamp defrost it. As the F/T defrosts, I check the F/T every minute to see if it's too cold or too hot. Once it seems warm, the BP already had a wiff of the defrosting rat, and is already in a hunt mode.
In order to keep it from attacking the net (which never happened once yet), I use the tongs to scratch the glass from the outside getting it's attention. It usually comes after my heat and sound source rather than the rat, so after it gets reasonably close to my hand that is outside the tank, I stop and hide my hand. Repeating the process until the rat is defrosted.
After the rat is nice and warm, I just open up the screen top, and hold the rat with my tongs near the ground. After a boop, my BP strikes and eats the rat.
So far, I have not encountered any issue with this feeding method.

For prekilled, I personally kill the rat myself. It pains me to do it, but what have to be done has to be done. I would lay a paper towel on the place I do cervical dislocation. After I killed the rat, it would pee and sometimes poop on the paper. I pick the rat up by it's tail with the tong, and rub it's body in it's urine lightly so it smells. Then, I would hang the rat in the tank with the tong. BP notices instantly and comes out to eat the rat real fast.

I don't feed my snakes live rats, because of the chance of biting back, and I personally think "thrill of a hunt" is a stupid anthropomorphism towards snake. I do not want to put my snake in danger for a feeling that we do not know that snakes even have.

I don't use frozen thawed, just tough to get snakes to eat it most times and takes too long to thaw it out, then I'm always worried about it being the right temp or frozen inside or too hot (or cooked or frost bit). A few bad frozen thawed and my snakes get real picky.

I don't to live because live rodents may hurt my snake, unless it's a pinky mouse for my King snakes or a pinky rat for my baby ball pythons.

I do fresh killed, I put about six rats or adult mice in a Tupperware container with a locking lid with a tiny hole in the lid, a CO2 bicycle inflator and a valve stem in one end of the Tupperware. I cover it with a towel when I gas them just so I don't have to watch LOL. I take it outside, gas them, and bring it inside, then after one minute they are all ready to feed, perfect temps, and my snakes go crazy over them.

I raise my own rats and mice in an ARS rat breeder rack, it's so easy compared to aquariums with water bottles and food dishes. It has a 5 gallon bucket of water that feeds the whole rack, and enough food in the backs to last for weeks. I just clean out the mice tubs every 2-3 days and the rats once or twice a week. I'm using shredded paper and newspaper (free) and just a hand full of aspen shavings per tub, saves me a bundle on rodent bedding. And I'm using Mazuri blocks to feed in overhead compartments, so easy. And feeding blocks from above saves me a ton in feed costs that I was just throwing out using feed dishes and mixed feed from the feed store.

My 1,626g female gets one small medium rat (or a large small, depending on what's available,) every Sunday. F/t. I just dangle it and she takes it.

My 202g female is upgrading from fuzzy unweaned rat pups to furred weaned rat pups this week. One every Sunday. F/t. I just dangle it and she takes it.

I have two very easy feeders.

We feed live so I pull hides and bowls for cleaning. This lets them know what is coming and they start cruising for food. Then I toss each rat in, pull up a chair and monitor. Anything not caught in the first 5 minutes normally isn't getting eaten so it goes into the holding spot until next feeding. Once they strike, bowls and hides go back and once everyone has struck or had food removed I'm done. We have a rescue Butter Spider we just got that spins so I hold the rat by the tail till he strikes then make sure to watch till he at least has the rat in his mouth. Once he has it in his mouth he's good. His second feeding he was blue in on shed but we offered anyway and he was so blind with shed he had a hard time finding the rat's face to eat. He struck and killed it but the rats face was wrapped up in his coil. He ended up crawling all over his cage looking for the rats face to eat. :rolleyes: He's our special snow flake....

I feed frozen/thawed. I usually feed on Saturday, give or stake a day or two. Il lay the frozen rats and a mouse out on a paper towel in the room whil I'm at work, or over night before I go to bed. When I get up or get home I'll put the rats in one plastic bag and the mouse in another, our tap water gets to 113 degrees, I'll put the rodents in a bowl wrg te hottest tap water and lay them warm until they are ~100*. On my way to putting them I. The bag I will take a rat and blow the scent into each tub, and the mouse for my male mouser. This gets them perked up and ready for food. Once the rodents are at about 100* I'll dangle them into the tub, if they don't take it when I just put it in, then I'll make it scuttle around the tub making scratching/walking noises, this usually gets there attention. If they don't feed, I'll reheat in the sink getting the rodent wet and try one more time. They usually take it but if not then the cats get it.

Some times when walking the mouse around for my male, he will be inside a hide that I left a clear window on, so I can see him tracking the mouse but the plastic is in the way. So when I lift the hide out of the way, he strikes immediately. It's funny to watch him not figure out that he could just come out of the hole and get the mouse.

One of my females gets scared of any moving rodent, so to get her to feed I thaw and heat up the rat. Then just place it infront of her hide an go on. She will only eat over night. Usually it's gone in the morning, if not then it goes to the cats.

That's how I go about it,
Now that o think about it, all of them feed a little differently.

Kyle


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Still trying to convert my BP from live to F/T, but she is still growing so I am more concerned about just getting her to eat than what she is eating. She is a BAD wobbler, so I dangle the mouse by the tail right in front of her face to get her interest, then I cup my other hand behind her, around the back of her, so that when she wobbles she just hits my hand and has some stability. Almost need to touch the mouse to her nose for her to hit her target, but so far she is doing well. I do feed her in her enclosure, reason being that she is very insecure about being involuntarily moved, probably because she is so unsteady. When I move her anywhere, she stays curled up until I move her back, so I try not to move her at all. Not sure why she doesn't like F/T though, it is not like she actually hunts. The one time I actually dropped the mouse in there with her, she bashed her face against the ground until she was dazed and I just couldn't do that to her again... The wobble is just too severe. Next week we are going to try F/T soaked in sardine juice and see how that goes.

The GTP and ETB are ravenous monsters that will strike at anything that moves, and they mean business. I actually feed them with a cobra grabber because they have such a wicked feed response and I am a big pansy. I leave them coiled up on their branches, stick the rat in with the grabber, and they snatch it right out of the air. Craig is so used to the routine by now that he would probably almost catch it out of the air like a dog catching a biscuit, but he has been fed this way forever. The ETB I just switched from live this fall when I got her, but it wasn't much of a transition. She will bite at anything and she has a grip like a bear trap even at her age.

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Originally Posted by BR8080

Thanks for the heads up, I figured the larger the prey the longer the soak - and yes, making sure the innerds aren't stiff is what the reptile guy told me also. I guess I was concerned the prey would start to spoil but it doesn't seem to be the case based on your experience.

Also, speaking of size, I am feeding too small I think honestly - I have to buy more frozen today and I'll ask for the next size up from fuzzy (the fuzzy is just under her thickest point so I've feed her 2 the last couple times)




Thank you..

I put the hot H2O bowl with mouse in the tupperware I feed in as to pre-scent that and not the entire room although I'm sure some of the scent permeates throughout. It's pretty awesome that when she goes into that tupperware, she knows what's next and is tongue flicking and ready after having her for just 3 weeks now.

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I never trust myself to guestimate prey size, so I'll just make sure the rodent is 10-15% of the baby snake's weight. That has worked well.


I'll let the ratsicle thaw in an old insulated lunch bag for an hour or two, grab a recycled Pho takeout cup with lid. Nuke the water to about 110-120 degrees (as the temp gun reads) and let it soak inside the plastic bag with lid on for an hour. The last 10 minutes: remove the rat and heat the water back up to 120. By then the critter will be about 90 degrees, and I'll make sure there aren't cold spots at its head and the belly's soft. Then I hit it with a hair dryer (which makes the snake go nuts) until the gun reads about 100 on the fur.


The danger of heating the rat too quickly is they sometimes explode. :explosion:puke:



Tub feeding is up for debate. ;)

After a week of having her, I was successful with feeding my lil baby ball python!
She was originally given live, so my plan was to do live. I got a small mouse for her, put the mouse in a tub right next to her tank for the whole day. Night time comes around, and I put her in her feeding tub. I grab the mouse and place it in a pillowcase to swing it in circles a couple of times to make it dizzy. I accidentally hit it against my desk and it was killed instantly. Hoping I could still get her to eat, I tried to zombie dance it, but she didn't buy it. I decided then to place her back in her tank, and left the prekilled mouse in there with her. An hour passes, and she comes out of her hide and starts smelling the mouse. She then tries to eat it butt first, realized that's not gonna work, and started eating the head. XD

I have to ask though, is this method okay for her to eat? Or should she get into the habit of striking her food?

this is how I feed my BP in a cage. I used a paper towel to avoid eating any substrate.
here is the video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7H0dBec8ak

That's what I do.

Throw frozen rats in a bucket, add cold water, leave in my laundry sink for a couple to few hours (max 4 or so so). Usually do that around mid day, so I can feed in the evening.

Drain cold water, add hot tap water (very hot, not boiling of course) WAIT 10 minutes

Drain water, add hot tap water, wait 10 minutes

drain water, add hot tap water

drain water, wrap rats in the specific "rat towel" (old towels only used for that purpose)

by the time I walk up to the rack, the towel soaked up all the water, and the snakes pretty much come shooting out their tubs to grab the rats from the tongs.

Now..If I have mostly "small" rats, I usually just do 2 x 15 mins hot water (drain ,refill twice with hot water)

With bigger ones I prefer the 3 x 10 minutes to make sure they are nice and hot all the way through..

This method has never failed me. Even snakes that were used to "live" took the FT immediately.


"Rat towels" get washed separately on short but hot cycle. Find that way easier and more economic then using loads and loads of paper towels.

Btw. I agree with others, mice pinkies seem WAY to small a meal for a Ball Python. Unless you might have one below 30 grams or something ?