Feeding live?

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Originally Posted by AnnaK231

Thanks for for cleaning up the post.

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You're welcome :gj:

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His cage is perfect, I will go back to small rats and try and find rat pups (I think they were called) if it's too big. I read that he can eat prey 10-15% his body weight...do you know if this is true? I'd think the 10% would be fine but the small rats I have on hand (frozen) are about 13% of his weight.

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This while it applies to hatchlings up to juvenile definitely does not apply to adults as their metabolism slows down dramatically for example I have big females 2500 grams all the way to 4000 grams that only ever eat rats that are in the 120/150 grams range and even than every now and than I skip a week of feeding.

Males are fed even less they actually get preys that are about 55 grams to 75 grams.

They can eat more however it is not necessary, it's already a lot of food for them when you compare their activity level to the food intake, of course in the wild they might snatch the biggest prey available but you have to keep in mind that the next one might not come around for month, here in captivity we serve them a meal every single week.

Feeding smaller prey allows to have animals that eat with consistency avoiding long fast and allowing steady weight gain.

When fed to much they will at some point fast to catch up.

Let's try this again because apparently some people have issues understanding what being on topic means and prefer to derail the thread once more

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Originally Posted by Deborah

The thread has now been re-opened, for those wishing to continue the great Live vs F/T debate you can do so here http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-vs-F-T-debate

Now back to our regular programming.

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Originally Posted by MontyAndMelissa

Were getting off point. Some snakes won't eat live, some snakes won't eat f/t. The way I see it is if you can't feed your snake a live animals because it's "morally wrong" you shouldn't own a snake. Sometimes that's what needs to be done to save the snakes life, the key thing right now is getting that snake fed, regardless of how it's done. Now, enough pointless banter and give this owner some information that will actually help.

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Thank you MontyAndMelissa. The question about whether to feed live is prolific in the reptile community. I maintain the position that snakes evolved over millions of years to hunt live, breathing, moving prey. If it won't eat f/t you need to introduce a litany of various live prey items to get that meal in the animal. Live adult mice do the trick usually. Try different colors and breeds if necessary. If you have access to them, african soft fur rats are usually beloved by bps as a delicacy. Sometimes live gerbils and hamsters can do the trick to rev up the feeding response. The only risk you run using alternative feeders is having to continuously purchasing them for the animal. Some bps become fixated on them.