First Feed

[mousepotato]

Just wanted to share my first baby Ball Python feeding: it had been 1 week
since she was fed last according to the store I bought her from. She had
been hunting/prowling all day; we made the 30 mile trip to pick up some
pinkies...they looked so *small*, I figured as hungry as she is 'one' will
NOT be enough...I was right.
Thank goodness I already had a pair of surgical Hemostats (come in handy
when you build/repair PC's!!), otherwise I'm afraid she would have had my
fingers *along* with that poor pinkie! ; ) She grabbed it within 2 seconds
of dangling it in front of her. Ecstatic experience!!
But I must have made a mistake next....instead of waiting for her to finish
her first 'kill', and helping her with the second, I just laid the pinkie on
a log for her to 'kill herself'. After swallowing the first pinkie, she
went for the second, but she captured it 'in the middle', instead of from
one end or the other...I was afraid she was never gonna get it *turned* so
she could swallow it! I almost panicked! I tried to *help* her gently with
the hemostats, but that only made her 'protect' it more fiercely within her
coils...so I left her 'alone' (watching from afar), and somehow, with the
help from rubbing against the log, this way and that, she re-positioned her
prey to go down the right way! AWESOME!! My first 'feeding' with her was a
great success...just *had* to share ; )

[Hoomi]

Cool!

My BP. Phil, sometimes acts as though he's killing his prey (even though I feed pre-killed), and will strike and coil around the rodent. Once he's satisfied that he won't receive any further resistance from the prey, he'll manipulate it with his coils to get a good angle at the head to swallow it. On the initial strike, they'll often grab almost anywhere they can get a good hold on, and then coil and constrict to fully subdue the prey. Don't worry about them not being able to get the prey into a good positiion to swallow. They've got a great instinct on what to do about that themselves.

It's sometimes a very interesting "show" to watch how efficiently they can do things without all these extra limbs we have.

[BallKingdom]

Hemostats are a must when feeding pinkies! Last time I fed pinkies barehanded I had a hungry hatchling coiled around my finger trying to eat me!

I feed freshly killed prey. When i feed them I always have to make sure they grab it in right on the neck or head. If they get the head or neck they can eat it right away without spending 5 minutes trying to find it. It happens when they grab the middle, and try eating it butt first, or blow a good 5 minutes looking for it. I once had Goldy chew on a mouses leg for a while.

[SheSkweezes]

Our Lucy has had similar experiences. I have avoided her strikes easily though. We feed live ( she was not interested in F/T at all). SHe started on tiny pinkies and is now eating halfgrown mice and rat pinkies, once in a while a gerbil or hamster fuzzy, depending on what the pet store has in stock. We bought a small 5 gal. plastic tank and line it with a paper towel. We place our prey in it first, then (after washing off the prey scent from our hands!!-very important!!) we place Lucy in the tank second. THis was she does not associate our hands with food, nor her own cage with food either. She strikes within seconds on the first kill, then up to a few minutes for the 2nd prey (only if the first is very small). Once we had 2 mice huddled together, she bit one behind the head and had BOTH of them wrapped up in her coils. She killed both, but I had to tie a string to the 2nd mouse's tail and wiggle it around before she'd eat it. After She's done we gently take her out and put her back in her tank. She's never regurgitated either.

[Ironhead]

She strikes within seconds on the first kill, then up to a few minutes for the 2nd prey (only if the first is very small).

Strange, my BP is just the opposite. He watches for several minutes until he strikes the first, and the second one is hit practically the very second it is introduced into the tank.

[Hoomi]

Depends on how hungry Phil is. This past week, he'd been kind of "off his feed" getting into his shed cycle, so he hadn't eaten in a couple of weeks. Even though he was then in the middle of actually shedding, he was out prowling as though hungry, so I thawed the rat out and presented it to him. He wasted no time in striking on it and scarfing it down. The first time I'd presented the rat, though, he'd shown no interest in it at all.

He was out prowling again last night, so I think I'll swing by today and get him another rat.

[viperroadster]

when i bought my ball he was about 3-4 months old, on his first feeding i fed him a young adult mouse and he hit it so hard he killed it instantly, now he is about 9 months old and i feed him two mice twice a week, and he disposes of them pretty quickly. I feed him in a plastic 5 gallon small animal tank. I put him in first and use the lid from the tank to shield him from seeing me drop the live mouse in. Within 10-15 seconds of me lifting the lid out and placing it back on top the tank he will have already constricted the mouse and started to kill it. He has never had any problem with a kill or swallowing his prey.

[BallKingdom]

Is he big enough to start taking small rats?