How many mice

My bp is young ( not sure of age) about 24"
I feed him one adult mouse every 7 days which he always takes with no trouble.
Since his first shed ( the first one with me ) he has really gobbled up the last two mice. The last one being Monday night. And when he had swallowed that one he seem to be looking for more or still hungry so to speak.
Should I try to feed him two mice at a time??? or is he to young?
I know they need time for there systems to digest
I want to stay on feeding him mice til he is an adult due to the many things I have read about mice providing more calcium and such for growning bp's then will switch to rats when older
Let me know your thoughts/eperience with this
Thanks!

It's worth a try. Alternatively, you could bump up his eating schedule by a day or two and see if that works better for you. I used to have an adult bp who only ate once a month, but she'd eat 4 or 5 mice each time.

Jotay, I currently have a BP that is the same length as yours is. I am currently feeding him small to medium size rats once every 10 days. It is a big item for him to get down, but he has no troubles with it. But if you still want to stay with adult mice, feed him one and when he has it completely down feed him another. you should be able to feed him 2 adult mice about every 5 - 7 days or so. Hope that this helps.

Good question, my ball is about 22'' and i thought about feeding him 2 mice last night (Tuesday). I feed him every 4 days and he strikes and kills the mice in less than a minute each time, he knows whats going on when i put him in the feeding box and i have only had him 9 days, he has eaten 3 times already (he ate the first night i brought him home) but after i let him choke down that first mouse last night it left a nice size lump in him, so i figure i'll just wait and just feed 1 mouse every 4 days, I don't want to over feed him... He is a GREAT eater so far!!

My 5 month old Bp is bout 18- 20 inches( Im giving a guesstimate havent measured him acurately) and I was told by the breeder to feed him adult mice. Well little did I realize that adult mice also come in various sizes (nothing is simple). Well I told the pet store I bought the frozen mice from to give me large mice , I figured large=adult, right? Well these things are like 3 3/4-4 inches long nose to butt! Its amazing but he seemed to get one down in about 10 min. I hope these arent too big for him they seem to be about as fat around as he is maybe a little more .I guess what Im gettin at is if it leaves a bit of a lump in him, Im not sure if more food would be too taxing on the digestive system. Im sure the pros here know whats best though. 8)

bigslimrich, WHoa, you are feeding that BP way TOO fast. Ease off it a bit, you have fed him 3 times in nine days with one of those feedings 2 MICE?!? Let the snake digest, he is obviously jsut gonna eat what you throw in front of him so you have to control his feeding...

AS FOR JOTAY, I would not wait to switch to rats! Doing it down the road especially if you feed live can be extremely stressful on the snake. Rats are more feisty and way more aggressive than mice and they WILL hurt your snake. Switch to f/t is the best advice anyone can give you and then switch to rats now before she is older. It is much recommended that you switch to RATS and F/T. Remember doing it now, can mean less hassle later.....

And if your snake seems like she is still hungry...it may be so, but please, please, please do not over feed your BP. You can damage there GI tract very easily if you feed like some of you say you have been feeding. Especially for that 22" ball. Mine is 22 inches and eats one full size mouse ever week. Its perfect for her. She eats tuesday, ****s on thursday and its a good flowing cycle.

BEAGLE, no if the so called large mouse is about as big around as your snake, that is perfect...even if she is just a wee bit bigger and she is getting them down easy with no regurg problems then you are good...

beaglegod, if the food item leaves a slight lump in him then that is the right size food. I would not feed anything bigger until you can not see a lump when he eats. If he has a lump in him then that would be considered a good meal for him. Let him digest it for about 3 - 4 days before handling him. I would not feed him any more food for at least 7 days after a meal like that. When I feed mine he has a slight lump, and he doesn't get feed again for another 10 days.

bigslimrich, I agree with frekoverdose1. They should only eat about once every 7 days while the are young and then as they get older that increases to about once every 10 days and so on. Cut his food intake back some, or you will end up with an obese BP.

This is making me think, why don't the experts make a chart or something for what to feed a BP at specific lengths? Obviously some snakes are more aggressive feeders than others, but it would be good to see a more specific rule of thumb so that us newbies can get the general idea of when to move up. I was feeding my 19" BP two pinkie rats a week until a friend said that he was way too big for that and should move up to adult mice.

aaron, yes I agree two pinkies is way not enough for your bp. Pinkies are all fat and nothing else, while the closer you get to adults the more nutrients your snake gets. Hydra, my bp is only 18" and she is eating large adult mice without a problem...

i find it easier to go by wieght. i feed mine enaywhere from 25% - 30% of their body weight. in length...that means my 25" BP should get 2 large mice. she is almost 200 grams and the average lg. mouse is about thirty grams. now if only shed eat the way shes supposed to...
different places can consider different sizes to be "large" thats on reason i like going by weight also.

No, I did NOT feed him 2 mice, I said i was thinking about it. The mice i have fed him are not the biggest adult mice, i've seen bigger. I was maybe thinking about feeding him 2 smaller mice, but after i saw his nice lump i decided i didn't want to overfeed the little guy! Like i said he has eaten ever 4 days...

My BP's are also young, somewhere in the 24" to 30" range (they haven't been real cooperative about stretching out nicely for me to measure). Phil is the best eater of the two.

I tend to gauge my feeding interval on the snake's behavior. If Phil is spending most of his time just moving from one hide to the other to regulate his temperature, or simply laying on top of the one basking in the heat lamp, I don't feed him. Once he starts "prowling" his enclosure, as though he's looking for prey, I take that as an indication he's hungry, but I don't necessarily feed him right away. I've found that if I offer him the food the first day or so I see him prowling, he may not take it. If I wait a few days, he's more apt to feed right away.

If his "prey" is small, say a mouse rather than a small rat because the reptile shop was out of rats, I still only feed one at a time, and he'll be out prowling again usually within a week. A small rat seems to hold him a little longer, and depending on just how large the rat was, he may not start prowling for a week to two weeks.

That may not be the best way to determine interval to promote rapid growth, but so far it seems to be working well to minimize the possibility of overfeeding, as well as helping minimize the amount of wasted rodents.

Haven't measure my guy in awhile, but he's 7 months, about 2 feet and 240g (haven't weighed since last feeding). He gets 1 or 2 adult mice every 7 days. I have a surplus of them that's why we haven't moved to rats yet.

My understanding is that the reason you feed young every 5-7 days and adults every 7-10 days is because they need time to digest and for their gut to re-establish...or something like that.

Thanks for all the good advice.
I feed my bp mice and will do until adult because everything I have read says that mice have more calcium then rats ( rats have more fat) and for a growing bp the calcium is important for his bones to grow and size.
Then at adult switch to rats for girth build up.
And from the start they are always F/T never live.

I just didnt want to give him to much at once I know they have a funny system that needs time to digest.

As for everytime I feed he doesnt not have a bowel movement like one poster stated he feed on tues and snake poo'ed on thurs.
Mine seems to poo every 2-3 feedings .

Again thanks !!!

Quote:

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Mine seems to poo every 2-3 feedings

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Same here Jojo left me a 6" long log yesterday.
:D