our first day together

so i soaked dexter yesterday while i cleaned his viv... today when i brought him out to spend some time with us there was one little tiny patch still attached on him...

other than that, he's looking gorgeous!!! i can't believe how fat he is :w00t: he sheds his skin and all of a sudden he's waaaaaaaaaay bigger around. he's bigger around than an adult mouse... so do i have to increase his food cause i prefer to feed live and don't have anywhere to buy live rat babies from... so can he stay on mice? and how big till i have to change to rats?

Sounds like he's doing lovely!

You don't actually have to switch him to rats. Adam's said time and again that he has some lovely adult ball pythons that always take mice and they are just as healthy as the rat eaters so I'll go by his wisdom on this.

Most of ours eat rats simply because I can breed rats (and hate mice in the house) as well as it's just more efficient to feed a bunch of them a single larger rat than a few mice. However, having said that Rionach was raised on mice and switched to rats just awhile back. She's did just as well on multiple mice than she's doing on rats really...I can't see a significant difference in weight gain or feeding response from live mice to live rats.

He may well need to go up to multiple mice at some point but he'll likely do just fine on mice if that's what is easiest for you to acquire consistently for him. Just offer him a second one after he's got the first one well down and see how he does with it.

Again, going by the information I learned here you don't have to feed a prey item that's large enough to leave a big lump or anything. My Brannagh just barely looks a bit thicker after she eats but she's just hit 2,000 grams empty so I can't argue with the feeding advice that produces those results LOL.


~~Jo~~

whew... that's good to hear since we can get a constant supply of mice here but not live rats. and even feeding him multiple mice will be cheaper than feeding him rats since rats go for around $7 and mice $2.

thanks jo!