Hopper mouse or fuzzy rat

Well sinse Link is a bit underweight I was wondering if it would be better for him next feeding to get a fuzzy rat instead of the hopper mice he usually gets. Because they're fatter you know.Is this a good idea?

how long is he?? do you know how much he weighs??

Go for the rats if he'll take them. I only use hopper mice for the first meal or two (if they won't take rats) with all of my hatchlings then switch up to either large fuzzy rats for small mice. Unless your ball is a tiny one, hopper mice may be too small. Many of my hatchlings will take small adult mice for their first meal!

Hope this helps.

-adam

Yea .. if he's big enough .. go for it. I've always tried to get my little guys/gals on rats as early as possible.

i think i need to ge my girl on to rats cuz shes growin real fast and has almost out grown the large mice!

Ok, cool then. Rat it is.

Rat's also have more nutrients than regular mice, so if he'll take them it'll also be healthier and more satisfying to his diet ;)

Really? Cool! Now I just have to figure out the size. *heads over to rodentpro.com*

Neat. I was wondering about mixing in rat pups myself. I will have to order some and try feeding a few here and there.

You mean like mixing them with mice ??

I wouldent do that.....it would be to confusing for the snake,I would just continue feeding mice until your snake is big enough for a rat.

I agree with Brandon. Interestingly enough one of the problems with feeding snakes can be their liking/disliking a certain food. I've heard they're more used to gerbils (native although I'm sure this is more instinctual for the CBs) also when I had some troubles with my male earlier this year I tried switching fur colours a few times (he tends to like them darker). So I would wait until your snakes are big enough for small fuzz/hopper rats rather than mixing them in with the mice, the transition will probably be easier than you'd think :D

Well, ok, it can wait for a while then.

The whole rats have more nutrition than mice is mainly myth... there was a published report from a zoo on the components of various food items. Mice are actually richer in calcium and much lower in fat, while having marginally less protein. It was posted here a few months back so perhaps you can try searching for it. You will have to make the switch over to rats eventually, but I would wait until your guy is nice and fat and can afford to miss a few meals before making him switch.

Definitely start feeding larger mice though... it's been my experience that ball pythons can take prey items as large as 1/3rd of their weight, with 1/4 or so being ideal. Also, the younger the ball python, the larger the prey item they can handle in proportion to their weight. If you think about it, prey items in the wild don't exactly come available in the convenient sizes, so younger bp's need to be opportunistic. Not to mention, younger ball pythons have proportionally larger heads.

So, even a small hatchling should take juvenile mice. You should either feed juveniles or larger, depending on the size of your ball python.

Here's the study I think hhw is referring to that I posted a few weeks ago.