The importance of a 7-10 day feedings schedule for Balls the opportunistic feeder.

Looking for personal experiences or studies.
Im now figuring out a schedule on how I should breed & feed off my Rats. I had my 1st litter on 3/16 and see how they can go from food for the Balls to snacks for the Burm in what seems like a week or two.
Id like to hear what experianced Ball Python owners know/think is best or what should/shouldnt be done.
Ive been a Burm owner most of my life and Balls are a tottally different "Ball" game hahahaha.
With that said, can I feed my Balls (all over 6 months of age) 2 or 3 smaller Rats (depending on Gram weight) twice a month in order to use up my litters?
I understand there are other common sense options like F/T but im not looking for idea's as I feed fresh kill only at this point.
Thank you for any info you can share.
The Basic Question is - Can a Ball Pythons still thrive on a twice a month feeding schedule if they're eating more at each sitting?
Thx peeps ����

I think the only problem with that would be that some Ball Pythons refuse to take more then one food item per feeding.

Feeding twice the month a fairly large (but still appropriate) meal can be done with adults Ball Pythons. Esp. if you aren't building up a female for breeding.

I'm not sure I would want to do this with a younger Ball Python, though (below 1000gr)

They usually do get hungry more often and you don't want to put to large a meal into them. To make up for the missing week, you'd have to feed a meal that would be bigger then I would be comfortable with.

All that said, you do have the odd "young" BP that actually prefers to eat less often then weekly. I'd still like to offer weekly, though.

I know you said you prefer NOT to feed FT. So if you don't want to save surplus and feed it off that way, you could possibly sell some? But that might make you short on appropriate sized rodents, too.

Perhaps you could just see how it goes for a couple of month, try different things. Most likely once you have the ongoing "operations" things will fall into place and you will figure out what works :)

For what it's worth two of my five Royals will only eat every 10 to 14 days ...


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Originally Posted by Zincubus

For what it's worth two of my five Royals will only eat every 10 to 14 days ...


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I have one thats doing that too.. Its a Male and I think his Growth Spurt has slowed.. My female 1/2 his age (6 months) eats anything, anytime, anywhere hahahaha and she has now passed him by 100+ grams @450g.
I call her my Tooch hahahaha


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Originally Posted by zina10

I think the only problem with that would be that some Ball Pythons refuse to take more then one food item per feeding.

Feeding twice the month a fairly large (but still appropriate) meal can be done with adults Ball Pythons. Esp. if you aren't building up a female for breeding.

I'm not sure I would want to do this with a younger Ball Python, though (below 1000gr)

They usually do get hungry more often and you don't want to put to large a meal into them. To make up for the missing week, you'd have to feed a meal that would be bigger then I would be comfortable with.

All that said, you do have the odd "young" BP that actually prefers to eat less often then weekly. I'd still like to offer weekly, though.

I know you said you prefer NOT to feed FT. So if you don't want to save surplus and feed it off that way, you could possibly sell some? But that might make you short on appropriate sized rodents, too.

Perhaps you could just see how it goes for a couple of month, try different things. Most likely once you have the ongoing "operations" things will fall into place and you will figure out what works :)

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Your right I have to try it for 2/3 months and get a idea of how things go.
Now that I think about it, my male is already being picky at 10-14 day feedings so I could actually feed the female every week but go by feeder weight. So if they are 20 gram pups then give her 2 but the next week if their 35 give her one.. That way I'm still feeding every 7-10. What you think about that?



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Originally Posted by Mr Sully

Your right I have to try it for 2/3 months and get a idea of how things go.
Now that I think about it, my male is already being picky at 10-14 day feedings so I could actually feed the female every week but go by feeder weight. So if they are 20 gram pups then give her 2 but the next week if their 35 give her one.. That way I'm still feeding every 7-10. What you think about that?



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The thing is in the wild they don't eat every seven days of course ..that's just to suit us :)



There's a guy in the UK who feeds his snakes a varied diet of mice / rats / chicks .... and varies the sizes .... sometimes feeding doubles .... and mixes the dates anywhere between 5 / 7 /10 / 14 days ..



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Originally Posted by Mr Sully

Your right I have to try it for 2/3 months and get a idea of how things go.
Now that I think about it, my male is already being picky at 10-14 day feedings so I could actually feed the female every week but go by feeder weight. So if they are 20 gram pups then give her 2 but the next week if their 35 give her one.. That way I'm still feeding every 7-10. What you think about that?



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Sounds like a plan !! :)

The "varied" diet and such can backfire with Ball Pythons, though.

They sometimes decide they like one of those food items and then refuse everything else. And as we all know, they can be stubborn about it.
Through all my years with them, I like getting and keeping them on rats, because rats are easily available, in all kinds of sizes, and I don't have to feed more then one item, unless I want to.

I'd hate to get my BP stuck on something that is rather difficult to obtain. They are already such picky snakes ;)

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Originally Posted by zina10

The "varied" diet and such can backfire with Ball Pythons, though.

They sometimes decide they like one of those food items and then refuse everything else. And as we all know, they can be stubborn about it.
Through all my years with them, I like getting and keeping them on rats, because rats are easily available, in all kinds of sizes, and I don't have to feed more then one item, unless I want to.

I'd hate to get my BP stuck on something that is rather difficult to obtain. They are already such picky snakes ;)

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I cant remember what morph it is as pics online are deceiving but what size can your large 5' Ball take? .. And whats the aprox weight of that one?


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Originally Posted by Zincubus

The thing is in the wild they don't eat every seven days of course ..that's just to suit us :)



There's a guy in the UK who feeds his snakes a varied diet of mice / rats / chicks .... and varies the sizes .... sometimes feeding doubles .... and mixes the dates anywhere between 5 / 7 /10 / 14 days ..



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I agree... I think we may be doing things as healthy for them as possible but it sure isn't how its done in the wild.
I guess I'll play this all by ear, Im sure I will figure out whats going to work and what isn't rather quickly...


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Originally Posted by Mr Sully

I cant remember what morph it is as pics online are deceiving but what size can your large 5' Ball take? .. And whats the aprox weight of that one?


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My Pastel Yellowbelly Jag takes a large rat without problem and it leaves almost no bump. He weighs around 2500 or 2700 ? I have to weigh him , but he is pretty big. My big female can also take larges without a problem (or a big bump).

A large rat from one supplier is smaller or larger then from another, though... I need to weigh one once.

Usually I feed all of my adults mediums, but he would stay in feed mode and go back to cruising within 3 days on one medium. So I bumped him to larges. That actually keeps him satisfied for at least 10 days so, sometimes I go 14. I actually do not stick to a extreme feeding schedule. The young ones, yes. The hatchlings get food every 5 days, Juvies 7. Adults sometimes 7, sometimes 10 days. Sometimes even 2 weeks. I have no set "feeding day".

But I do like them on rats, because as is I have to order it online and I don't want to complicate matters, since they all do so well on them.

Ohhh Wow I didn't know any of these Balls were taking over A Mediums once adults. Someday when you remember weigh one of those Larges if you can so I can compare it with the Rat sizing chart posted on the Forum.


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Originally Posted by Mr Sully

Ohhh Wow I didn't know any of these Balls were taking over A Mediums once adults. Someday when you remember weigh one of those Larges if you can so I can compare it with the Rat sizing chart posted on the Forum.


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Most people stick with mediums, and I think most adult Ball Pythons do just fine on that! But those really large BP can take a large rat without a problem. I'm not talking about the XL or jumbo ones, though.

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Originally Posted by zina10

Most people stick with mediums, and I think most adult Ball Pythons do just fine on that! But those really large BP can take a large rat without a problem. I'm not talking about the XL or jumbo ones, though.

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Yeah the chart has a HUGE window. They say 150-265 grams is Large. That window is almost doubled. How crazy.


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I've had 130g rats sold to me as smalls. On a related note, I've had my ball python on a 2+ week feeding schedule for quite a while. He has no issue with taking the 130g rats and I'm certainly not feeding him those weekly - so 2 or more weeks it is. I actually have for a long time been doing it more based on his signals of hunger than a specific schedule. If he's hungry enough he will come out and climb around everywhere looking for food. I'd let him do that for a day or two for a while. With the 130g rats though, he doesn't tend to do that so I'll wait two weeks or so and watch for when he starts leaving his face out super early in the evening and leaving it out until 7 or 8 in the morning and occasionally even later to look for food. Of course, that's only one BP and I probably wouldn't have fed him 100g+ rats if they weren't sold to me as smalls. Now he has actual smalls this time around so the spacing's going to be dropped a bit.

I would consider myself an absolute noob when it comes to ball pythons since I've only had one for almost three years. However, since I have no interest in breeding I was always curious about what the best feeding schedule would be for Monty to keep him as healthy as possible. I am in no way saying that the weekly feedings done by others is not healthy. Please do not take this the wrong way. The reason I bring up breeding is because I have read that some breeders power feed their animals to get them up to weight. That being said, Warren Booth, I believe, posted an article on this forum a while back which I based my feeding schedule on. The article includes graphs on how a burm's organs responds to being fed and when they return to its baseline level. It might be worth a look. Again, I am in no way saying that what others do is wrong. I have a hell of a lot of respect for what the breeders and keepers on here do managing all the animals they do and how much time, effort and care that they put in. I am just saying I've adopted a 2+ week feeding schedule. It's been about a year and he's still growing and has had no major issues since using it. I actually find it better for him because there were a good amount of times he would refuse a meal on the weekly schedule. With two weeks in between feedings I rarely have that issue.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19043049

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Originally Posted by cron14

I would consider myself an absolute noob when it comes to ball pythons since I've only had one for almost three years. However, since I have no interest in breeding I was always curious about what the best feeding schedule would be for Monty to keep him as healthy as possible. I am in no way saying that the weekly feedings done by others is not healthy. Please do not take this the wrong way. The reason I bring up breeding is because I have read that some breeders power feed their animals to get them up to weight. That being said, Warren Booth, I believe, posted an article on this forum a while back which I based my feeding schedule on. The article includes graphs on how a burm's organs responds to being fed and when they return to its baseline level. It might be worth a look. Again, I am in no way saying that what others do is wrong. I have a hell of a lot of respect for what the breeders and keepers on here do managing all the animals they do and how much time, effort and care that they put in. I am just saying I've adopted a 2+ week feeding schedule. It's been about a year and he's still growing and has had no major issues since using it. I actually find it better for him because there were a good amount of times he would refuse a meal on the weekly schedule. With two weeks in between feedings I rarely have that issue.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19043049

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Sounds perfectly feasible after all they don't get fed every seven days in the wild ... There's some guy around who switches randomly between thawed rats / mice / chicks , feeding random sizes as well and even varying the time inbetween feeds 7 days , 14 days , 10 days etc ....


I feed all my 22 snakes anywhere between 7 and 14 days myself .

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To be honest I think people put way too much thought into prey size and feeding schedule. Think about how they feed in the wild, they do not focus on a certain size, they take what they can get when they can get it. The important thing for us is to give them enough to keep them healthy and not too much that makes them fat or go off feed. If your going for accelerated growth or added mass for a healthy breeding season, that obviously plays a role as well. But in general, you'll be fine feeding what you have available. I think it is easier to get consistent feeding habits staying on the smaller side and feeding more frequently. You will be absolutely fine feeding the undersized rats you have available 2-3 at a time and then dropping quantity as the rats grow in size. From what I remember reading of your posts, you are an experienced keeper so you should be able to tell when they are ready to eat again so just keep in mind that reading them is more important than being on a set size and schedule. I know for beginners a set size and schedule is a safer bet but I'm giving you this advise specifically because you are not a beginner. Example, if you give a smaller meal and they are ready to eat on day five, there is no reason to wait till day 7 just because you want to be on a 7 day feeding schedule. Same goes for a larger meal, if they are not ready to eat until day 14, that's perfectly fine. Size of their food and how often you feed really does not matter as long as you are meeting their needs. Just read them, feed them as many as they need to have a satisfying meal and you really don't need to worry about the size. Then just adjust each feeding, when they are ready to eat again, adjust quantity depending on what size you have available at that time. All these rules and charts are great for beginners but learning your animals and having experience, you can take a lot better care of your animals by your own judgment rather than listening to people on the internet or reading a chart.

I will point out that I am not a very experienced ball python keeper but I have many years experience keeping other snakes and reptiles and although they all are a little different, ball pythons are not difficult imo. I have many already and have been able to easily convert them all to f/t and eat regularly based on what size rats I have available. I do feel strongly about keeping them on one food source to avoid problems with them becoming picky eaters. Size, quantity and frequency are not all that important though. I feel reading each individual animal and feeding accordingly is much more important.