No live fuzzies- Try mice or f/t?

Adam I'm lookin forward to getting one of your 700 balls. Sounds like your balls are very friendly, and soft.. hearted.

Edit - nevermind

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Having 700+ ball pythons, how much time do you spend getting to know the typical behaviors and personalities of each individual snake? Do your snakes not show any behavioral changes in the time period after they defecate, and before you feed them again? Do you know each of them well enough to be sure?

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I'm not sure I see your point here. Normally when research is done it's looking for patterns of behaviour, a broad overview of what a certain species will do under a certain set of circumstances. You don't get a proper picture of anything if you focus on an individual animal's reaction as it may be a one time anomaly or some pattern specific to that one creature or that one circumstance. You would of course make note of this difference but in the end knowing the overall information is far more productive than one single snakes reaction to one single set of circumstances I would think.

As far as those other species of snakes go, I'll have to take your word for it ... over the last 25+ years, I've kept many different species of snakes, but I don't consider myself to be experienced enough in all of them to speak broadly about their behavior .... ball pythons on the other hand are a different story .... I feel quite comfortable stating that I KNOW ball pythons based on the real world hands on experience of working with them in large numbers for well over a decade now.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

Having 700+ ball pythons, how much time do you spend getting to know the typical behaviors and personalities of each individual snake? Do your snakes not show any behavioral changes in the time period after they defecate, and before you feed them again? Do you know each of them well enough to be sure?

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I guarantee that I spend more time with my ball pythons in any given week than you do researching ball pythons via google. This is my job and as a small business owner that is having great success with a rapidly growing a business I work at least 80 - 100 hours a week ... almost every waking hour is spent doing something related to my business and at night when I sleep, I dream about my animals ... by far, the vast majority of my work each week is spent actually handling ball pythons ... feeding them, cleaning them, taking pictures of them, examining them, and sometimes just sitting back with some of them on my desk or in my lap to enjoy one of the things that I am most passionate about in life.

I know my snakes ... some of them for over 15 years now ... I may not know a lot and things outside of the scope of ball pythons, but my ball pythons are one thing I know with 100% confidence .... I challenge many of the people that visit me to take any snake from any where in my facility and show it to me ... and I'm able to tell them what room it came from, what rack within that room, what tub from within that rack, what it ate last, who it's mother and father are/were, at least one little interesting story related to it's life, and how it will behave if set down on the floor and left alone (defensive, curious, shy, etc).

I see absolutely no signs of behavioral "changes" in the time period after they defecate and before I feed them again ... I can say with 100% certainty that I know each and every one of them well enough to be sure.

-adam

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Originally Posted by Adam_Wysocki

I see absolutely no signs of behavioral "changes" in the time period after they defecate and before I feed them again ... I can say with 100% certainty that I know each and every one of them well enough to be sure.

-adam

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after my snakes defecate they are very tame... my female who is usually very agressive when eating, spends most of her time around my neck. they still come out of their cages and hang out with me even if they havent eaten in weeks. so i agree, i see no behavioral changes......

LOL

While I love this scientific exporation into the brains of snakes, could we please get back to the original question, please?

If no live fuzzies are available, would it be better to try live mice or f/t rats?

Thanks!

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Originally Posted by Kiramay

LOL

While I love this scientific exporation into the brains of snakes, could we please get back to the original question, please?

If no live fuzzies are available, would it be better to try live mice or f/t rats?

Thanks!

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LOL...what all the back and forth really says is that nutritionally it doesn't matter which you choose to feed.

You might have an easier time feeding a mouse since your snake is used to live...some snakes don't switch to F/T quickly. On the other hand if long term you want them on F/T then now would be a good time to start making the change.

In the end it is up to you and won't make any difference what you decide to do.

Hope this helps,
Sean

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Originally Posted by lord jackel

LOL...what all the back and forth really says is that nutritionally it doesn't matter which you choose to feed.

You might have an easier time feeding a mouse since your snake is used to live...some snakes don't switch to F/T quickly. On the other hand if long term you want them on F/T then now would be a good time to start making the change.

In the end it is up to you and won't make any difference what you decide to do.

Hope this helps,
Sean

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It does, thank you. So pretty much its up to me, and then pray she eats.

I am going to assume that fuzzies don't move around much since they're still babies. Right? So, while I had planned to stay with live, now might be a good time to switch to f/t, rather then have my BP get used to chasing her prey, and then try to switch.

And a little OT, I looked up a few rat breeders within an hour drive or so to see if I could get live fuzzies from them.... lets just say I won't be getting any babies from them. lol "Murderer...!"

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Originally Posted by Kiramay

I am going to assume that fuzzies don't move around much since they're still babies. Right? So, while I had planned to stay with live, now might be a good time to switch to f/t, rather then have my BP get used to chasing her prey, and then try to switch.

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They don't chase their prey, they ambush hunt - wait for it to wander by and then strike. Fuzzies can move remarkably fast, actually.

Just buy whatever is easiest for you to obtain and what the snake will eat. If the snake won't eat the f/t, then buy the live mice. If she'll eat f/t, then get some mice or some rats, it really doesn't matter. Prey is prey, and the weight is mainly all you're looking at. I have 31 snakes right now(plus or minus some as some are always coming or going, haha), and they all eat live mice. Everyone is fat, happy and healthy, not to mention safe.