What a thrill! my first snake feeding

:) ah man how very cool!
my ball named Bengal had its first pinkie tonight since i made them feed it b4 leaving the store last Saturday
its about 18in and CB, it was the liveliest one in the tank and the brightest colored i might add, i felt good about buying from this store as they deal in exotics mostly and actually list the latin names on the tanks, thats a rareity, i have looked :cry:
Bengal had only been in the store 4 days, real freshy, b4 i snatched it up
ne ways i thought the first feeding was momentus and worth a camera session, so here you go
my cam is only a 1.2MP dino, though i am pleased with how it turned out :)

http://home.iprimus.com.au/rwebber/Bengal6.jpg

awesome! i didnt get to see mine eat his 1st meal, thats a great pic!
-jess

Awesome picture, and congrats on the first feeding. I would suggest a larger prey item next time, ball pythons can eat fuzzies or small mice as hatchlings. You should also try feeding fresh killed or frozen thawed if you haven't already. Welcome to the site!

Great picture!
Do what Gen said. They can eat a mouse as babies.

First off ... Welcome to the site! Glad to have you join us :)! Your little guy/girl could probably eat a bigger prey item. As long as the prey item, be it rat or mouse, is just about as big as the widest part of the snake .. its a good size. Are you feeding live, pre-killed, or f/t? That is a good pic tho :)

yeah, bigger food, i was working toward that
see when i first got it the store fed it a tiny pinkie, a runt, just to see if it would indeed eat something
(they had not had it long enough to feed yet)
it took 3 tries with placing the pinkie in the back of the mouth, essentially making it easier to swallow than not
but it did suck it down in the end, so thats what sold me
after that i thought it best to take it a step at a time and ease it up on bigger things
the pinkie in the pic is a medium sized one and Bengal took it right off
(as you can see, no assisstance required)
next time i will ask for a big one for sure, and then fuzzies, mice, so forth
i just wasn't liking the idea of stepping it up so fast when it was a little resistant to the runt pinkie

Definitely ask for a fuzzy or hopper next time. The way to tell what prey size is best is to look at the snake's max point of girth, and give a prey item that is equal to or slightly smaller than that. And thats the size prey that you food. I was feeding my BP small adult mice when it was the size of yours in the above picture, so...

lets see if i got this right
pinkie too small, small mouse better, yes?
for only 20c a day you can prevent snake hunger :wink:

http://home.iprimus.com.au/rwebber/Bengalfood.jpg

That's much better sized -- both prey and photo! Both very good photos, by the way. However, next time, please space food items at least 4 days apart or feed one immediately after the other. Otherwise you can cause digestion difficulties.

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Originally Posted by DarkeFireStorm

for only 20c a day you can prevent snake hunger :wink:

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LOL! That is a good pic! And i second what Marla said, once a week is best for your little guy :)

Welcome aboard! AWESOME shot you got there - i digs the close-ups!

I think your BP will be alright considering it only ate a pinky a few days before...but with the size mouse you are feeding now, you will need to wait at least 5 days to feed again. I fed my baby bp every 5-6 days up until I switched her over to rats (shes now about 35" long). I now feed her every 7-10 days depending on how much of a lump the rat leaves, its just kind of a judgement call.

i guess i needed to be told about the pic size
i have a 19" monitor and it looked perfectly fine to me
i figured it out though, its OK it just takes me longer :?
feedings are surely gonna be on a weekly basis for a while, yes
its just that Bengal had a runt pinkie last Sat and then only a pinkie again this time, so i thought some make up was needed, plus i had read that irregular intervals agree with them more than a regular feeding day, emulating nature and all, though i had thought once the 48hrs went by making it OK to hold them again that they could also be fed, so thats news to me, this is just like when i started keeping spiders all over again
ne day that goes by where you don't learn something is a waste i suppose :wink:

it may surprise you to know that i am not a photographer in the slightest
i do like to take pics, but you should see the crap i turned out b4 the digital cam age yeesh! :oops: with all the automated functions on them now, picture taking has gotten easy enough for even me to get it right
theres just a few things to getting a good pic
1. lots of light - avoid having the cameras flash go off if you can, digital cams need even more light than a film cam
2. don't use the zoom (especially digital zoom) - move the cam right on top of the subject w/ the macro setting on
3. take lots of pictures - its not like your wasting film ne more, i bet i take 10 pics for every one i keep
4. use the highest quality setting - you can always resize in an art program later, but you only get one shot at resolution
if there are more things to know, i don't know them
thats just what i've figured out through screwing it up so many times, nobody taught me this stuff