mice/rat question?

uhm ive been feeding an adult mouse and a hopper once a week..
and i was wondering if i can feed him two adult mice. i would do rats.. but theyre a bit costy at my reptile store and theyre pretty gross
my bp is around 32 inches.. or more. around there thanks

I personally prefer to feed one good sized item rather than multiple smaller items. Rats pack a better punch for their size compared to a mouse anyway so personally i suggest switching to rats asap. When you have a full grown adult, feeding mice will get very costly.

alright i guess so
so tell me
what size rat would equal two adult mice?

A small rat :)

alright thanks
thats.. an extra 50 cent every week.. but its for my snake so whatever haha

50 cents is not bad at all. You should try to switch to F/T and order online, that'll save you a lot of money. I have 10 semi-adult to adult BP's that I recently acquired that were ALL on live and from week 1, 8 of them took F/T with no problem. Small rats are the way to go (60-80g).

i'd go with just slightly bigger then a small rat. your ball is around the same size as my blood was when i switched it to rats. by slightly bigger i mean maybe a week older rat and since i switched it to larger prey my blood has shed every month since only problem is live rats cost a Lil more then frozen at least here where I'm from your best bet is to find a snake breeder close by how breeds his own rats you might have to drive an hour to get to there house but guy i found that i get my rats off of is half the price of getting a rat at the pet shop

What everyone's forgetting to mention is that it's a rare ball python that will switch from mice to rats without any fuss. It happens, just not that often.

You will probably need to scent the rat to smell like a mouse by rubbing mouse pee into its fur. That gives you the best chance of success on the first try. After the snake has eaten one or two scented rats, it will probably have no problems with unscented.

Winged Wolf is right. I have two BP's that don't do rats....mice only. I feed them 50-60g's of mice per feeding (2-3 adult mice). I order from Big Cheese where adult mice are
.52 each and jumbo (33g-45g) mice are .63 cents each. I would order a 25 or 50 pack of jumbo mice and 15 pack of weaned rats and slowly switch him over. I am going to either do that or just try to switch them over after breeding season when they should be hungry and hopefully will eat anything, especially a rat with mice scent on it.

Hi,

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

What everyone's forgetting to mention is that it's a rare ball python that will switch from mice to rats without any fuss. It happens, just not that often.

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I got amazingly lucky this week then - I switched 3 mouse reared BP's over to rats on the first try. And that's F/T too. :banana: :banana: :banana:

I did skip a week to make sure they were hungry though. :gj:


dr del

i would.. but u see im still young
and i live with my parents. and im asian. my mom would freak out seeing rats in the freezer..

I thaw rats and mice together and have never had a prob switching from mice to rats.

ill stick with live..
untill i learn my lesson

I would always thaw the mice with my boas rats. When I switched my ball to small rats, it took them NO PROBLEM. It was actually a little nicer since he wasn't so coordinated in positioning the mice properly. He did the last two small rat feedings just fine.

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Originally Posted by davidyun

ill stick with live..
untill i learn my lesson

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wait, what?

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. It sounds like you're saying that you'll switch to f/t AFTER your snake gets injured, or are we talking about something else?

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Originally Posted by jfreels

wait, what?

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic. It sounds like you're saying that you'll switch to f/t AFTER your snake gets injured, or are we talking about something else?

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Ya thats kinda how I took it... Why would you wait till AFTER it gets injured??

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Originally Posted by stupidcracker00

Ya thats kinda how I took it... Why would you wait till AFTER it gets injured??

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Because he's saying he is going to take the risk feeding live because it is better than his mom throwing him out of the house for keeping rats in the freezer.

I feed live too... but I've learned my lesson - be vigilant and keep that tong ready for intervention.

I'm lucky, all my snakes are awesome eaters and will eat whatever they're given, rat...mouse...I'm pretty sure they'd eat a stinky unwashed sock if I tossed it in there. ;)