Can everybody chime in with what your feeding your BP and it's weight per gram?

what I meant was how does the girth of the prey item you were thinking of feeding compare to the snake's girth? If it's too big in girth then that's a show-stopper, no matter what it weighs.


you've got a big boy! 1300 grams....do you have a length for him? I love the big boys :D

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Originally Posted by BostonMacK

Adam,

That is great to know. I just remember about a month ago feeding my boy a single 40g rat and he was out roaming his cage two days before his feeding day which freaked me out causing to post a thread here. Looking back he did act as if he was hungry and the behavior stopped after I fed him his usual 80g rat. If a single 45g rat is a healthy diet for my boy I am all for it. I'll see how he does with that for a while.

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Ball pythons will fill up on as much food as they can while available and then take long periods off from eating all together. For a male on a weekly feeding schedule, one "small small" rat is plenty. They don't get "hungry" the same way we as humans do.

Given his age and current weight/feeding schedule, I'd bet that you're in for a nice long fast starting near the middle of October.

Hope this helps.

-adam

Adam on your breeding calendar page you say you put your females on a heavier than normal feeding schedule. What exactly is that? You've said you never feed larger than a small rat, so do you feed more often?

as i've just started with my baby ball i have been going along the lines of what i was told by the chap i bought him off. he said to me to feed every 10 - 14 days but big food. my ball is 4 months old - 80g and i just fed him a small f/t adult mouse weighing about 10g which went down very nicely.
it certainly seemed the right thing to do???

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Originally Posted by rottendj

as i've just started with my baby ball i have been going along the lines of what i was told by the chap i bought him off. he said to me to feed every 10 - 14 days but big food. my ball is 4 months old - 80g and i just fed him a small f/t adult mouse weighing about 10g which went down very nicely.
it certainly seemed the right thing to do???

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I tend to feed my hatchlings more frequently than 10-14 days. I keep them on hoppers for a few months then switch them to very small rats (slightly larger than the crawlers). I move up to small medium rats once they reach sub adult size. I've been trying to keep my adult balls on small medium rats for a while now and they seem to do very well on the smaller prey. Great feeding response most of the time.

Here's an approximation of my feeding:

<150 grams until they can handle rat pups - 8-11 gram mouse hoppers (occasionally twice a week)
<600 grams - 20-29 gram rat pups
>600 grams but less than 1100 grams - 30-49 gram weanlings (sometimes still pups - depending on the snake)
>1100 grams - 50-89 gram small rats
>1500 grams - 50-89 gram small rats approx every 10 days

I got my weight estimates from the rodent breeder website I got my last batch of frozens from. My more "slender" snakes I keep on the smaller size prey item for a longer period of time, until they are enough of a pork chop to size up. Anyway, you get the picture.

Unless otherwise noted, they are on a weekly schedule.

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Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki

Ball pythons will fill up on as much food as they can while available and then take long periods off from eating all together. For a male on a weekly feeding schedule, one "small small" rat is plenty. They don't get "hungry" the same way we as humans do.

Given his age and current weight/feeding schedule, I'd bet that you're in for a nice long fast starting near the middle of October.

Hope this helps.

-adam

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Man, I hope he does'nt go into a fast because I know that will stress me out beyond beleif. I am a ball of stress anyway and that could send me to the funny farm. Regardless, I am going to keep him on 40g rats from this point on while keeping a close eye on his weight. He is a big boy and whatever I can do to assure he doesnt become overweight and unhealthy I will do. Thanks for the insight Adam, much appreciated. Atleast if he does go into a fast I will have an idea as to why.

Auryn's about a year old and ~600g. I feed him one "jumbo" mouse from Big Cheese Rodents once a week--their chart says those mice are anywhere from 33-45g. These seem to do very well for Auryn--and unless I'm told otherwise, I think one of them a week will be good for him into the foreseeable future.

I think the thing to bear in mind is what an artifical situation we keep captives balls in. In the wild I think things are very much feast or famine or at least very irregular meals. Our nice cosy cages, regular feeds and reduced exercise are a pretty abnormal environment. Growing BPs seem to have a incredible capacity to eat and grow - I imagine that wild BPs grow much more slowly than captive animals although I admit I have no eveidence for this - does anyone?. Adult BPs don't have the same feed requirements and regular overfeeding can easily send them into an infuriating fast as I experienced when I fed Monty on too large small rats for a while.

I find sizing feeds quite frustrating acutally due to the variability of what terms such as 'small' and 'weaner' mean in practice. I buy throzen rats online and the variation is considerable - one batch of small rats approaches 'weaners' others are much larger (too large for me) and some weaners are so small they approach fuzzies. The ideal 'large weaner/small small rat' is often elusive. There is only one local supplier but their stock is enormously variable in availability and I have no idea of it's quality. I have never weighed my rats but I shall do so later - Monty is over 2 years old now and getting on for 1.5kg.

Fish,

The 40/45g rats I am feeding him are a good deal thinner than the girth of my boy. You can barely see a visible lump in his belly after a meal.

Azure,

I beleive our snakes both came out of NERD around the same time give or take a month or so. When I brought him home Kara told me he was around 6 months old and that was about5.5 months ago. He is rather large compared to your snake and I hope I havent been feeding him an unhealthy diet.

I am going to take a few pics today just for an excuse to show him off. I can't wait to get my next snake either, I am thinking a pastel from either NERD/8ball. Kara has been so good to me it would be hard to buy from anyone else yet on the other hand it could be fun to mix it up a little. This is only the beginning for me ;)