Good news! but..

[Immy]

Pennyworth ate after 5 months of fasting! But the only thing I'm concerned about is that I fed him a small mouse which is barely anything compared to his size. He is roughly 650g right now, used to be 715g. So It's good that he didn't loose a sufficient amount of weight. I fed him another small mouse, he hesitated at first so I left it in there near his hide hole. After 5 minutes, I went to check up on him and It was gone. I now left another one in there. When can I start feeding him bigger? I'm thinking about gradually raising the size, next week it'll be large mice, maybe 2 of those. And then to the large rats. I don't know, what do you guys think? Am I just being overly paranoid? lol

[Animals As Leaders]

Pennyworth ate after 5 months of fasting! But the only thing I'm concerned about is that I fed him a small mouse which is barely anything compared to his size. He is roughly 650g right now, used to be 715g. So It's good that he didn't loose a sufficient amount of weight. I fed him another small mouse, he hesitated at first so I left it in there near his hide hole. After 5 minutes, I went to check up on him and It was gone. I now left another one in there. When can I start feeding him bigger? I'm thinking about gradually raising the size, next week it'll be large mice, maybe 2 of those. And then to the large rats. I don't know, what do you guys think? Am I just being overly paranoid? lol

Don't know who told you a Ball can eat a large rat, but thats very false info. I really hope you don't plan on feeding live. If he/she is almost 700 grams or "was" then a small rat will do fine. Large rats can inflict some serious damage to a snake of that size, or to any size ball for that matter. I don't feed my 4000 gram female anything bigger then a small when its live. I'll give her a medium f/t from time to time but thats it. Careful where you get your information from, and always refer to this site for good advice not petco lol. Good luck!!

[Immy]

Don't know who told you a Ball can eat a large rat, but thats very false info.

Oh crap, I meant small rats. Sorry for the typo.

[bsash]

Depending on the size of the ball python they could definitely eat a large rat, my 2,300 gram female ball python eats a medium rat once a week. A 4,000 gram ball python could most certainly eat a large, and probably should. Feeding pre- killed, frozen/ thawed, or live is personal preference, I only feed live and have absolutely no problems in doing so. Feeding live just means you have to be responsible and supervise all of the feedings.

[Animals As Leaders]

Depending on the size of the ball python they could definitely eat a large rat, my 2,300 gram female ball python eats a medium rat once a week. A 4,000 gram ball python could most certainly eat a large, and probably should. Feeding pre- killed, frozen/ thawed, or live is personal preference, I only feed live and have absolutely no problems in doing so. Feeding live just means you have to be responsible and supervise all of the feedings.

**This is an old thread, but I find this post to be rather misleading so I am posting again...I was kind of surprised no addressed this earlier.

It also means your risking your snakes health, and them getting injured? Why not feed a couple of smalls rather then risking a fat rat chewing the snot out of your snake? I really haven't heard a lot of people feeding large rats to their balls even to their monster size ones. Maybe if their p/k but not live!! I have a very big female, and I would never put her in harms way like that, ESPECIALLY on purpose! If anything I feed multiple prey items of the proper size. Some snakes aren't the best at killing rats lol. I have some that couldn't coil a live rat to save their lives (thank god I feed f.t). If I were to feed them a live large you can kiss that beautiful un-chewed skin goodbye!

Could a BP eat a live large rat? If its big enough, well most certainly yes. The real question is, SHOULD you feed a live large rat to your BP? And the answer to that is NO! Supervised or not supervised, this is something that should be avoided at all costs. And to anyone that does this, please re-think what your doing, and realize the unnecessary risk your taking with your animals. Maybe nothing happened yet, but why would you even risk it? Do me, and BP.net a favor think your posts over before you post because this is very misleading information, and if a newb read this it could have caused some damage to "their" snake not yours which isn't fair...