Mice vs. Rats

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Originally Posted by KryptBaby

is there a nutritional difference though?

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Nope. A 10g rat has the same nutrition as a 10g mouse. A mouse and rat of the same size have the same nutrition. The only difference is that rats have a percentage or two higher of fat.

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Originally Posted by tj4x4fun

Newbie here. I feed rats. Also what is a asf?


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ASF = African Soft Furred rat. One of their natural prey items in the wild, which are also bred as feeders.

My ball pythons generally get mice until they get big enough that they need to eat something larger than XL adult mice, and then it's frozen / thawed rats. I don't feed live rats at all anymore. I switch them to frozen / thawed as soon as they will take it. I used to order all of the smaller sizes of frozen / thawed rats but no longer feel that it is worth the extra money you pay for them. They seem to grow fine on the mice and then switch from frozen / thawed XL mice up to small rats for me without any issues at all.

Unfortunately in my area there is a severe lack of rodent suppliers. There are no rat pinks-pups available so I need to feed mice until they are large enough for a small rat.

i like rats for 2 reasons
1. i have to breed my own feeders and a whole rat rack smells better than even just 1 tub of mice.
2. i often have to feed live and young rats are more "docile" prey items than adult mice of equal size.

i only keep rat eaters. i try to switch for a couple of weeks, but if a BP insists on being a mouser, off to the ads it goes (i indicate what it eats of course). just a matter of convenience since i refuse to keep any mice on a regular basis, and commuting to buy some mice everytime i have to feed one or 2 mousers is too much work to be fun.

I feed both .. breed my own rats tho .. I try to keep my balls on everything .. I make it as easy as I can for myself

mostly rats and sometimes ASF

To me it is a matter of what works and what is convenient so I prefer to feed rats (Single prey vs multiple) but I do breed both.

We raise rats, mice, and ASF. The vast majority of our collection has no preference, so they eat whatever we have that is appropriately sized, and/or whatever we have the most of (for example, if we have a bunch of extra ASFs, or mice, everybody gets those even if they eat rats).