What size mouse should I feed?

[Hannahrenee]

Hi, someone on here posted a feeding size chart, And that's what I've been going by for feeding my ball python. The chart says to feed adult mice to ball pythons between 200-350 grams. My ball python is around 220 grams, but adult mice are too small for him. They are much smaller than his girth and he eats them in less than a minute. My question is, what should I feed him if adult mice are too small? Should I feed him two adult mice at once, or should he eat rats now? The chart says 350-500 gram ball pythons should eat weaned rats. Should I try that or will it be too big for him since he's only 220 grams? He's light weight, but he has a fat girth so adult mice don't even make a slight lump in his belly.
I know the general rule is to feed the size of their girth or to feed 10-15% of their body weight. But, I don't know what size feeder wpuld match his body and weight.

[tttaylorrr]

remember that the feeding guide is just a guide, not a set of rules.

i'd try multiple adult mice; weigh each adult mouse to make sure he's getting a proper-sized meal. however, if you want to switch to rats i'd suggest doing so as soon as possible as it gets harder to convert a snake to rats as it gets older. a weaned rat is way too big right now, so the snake would need a rat pup.

[Pezz]

rat pup. rats are more convenient for feeding. feeding one rat compared to multiple mice is just easier. I do one pup once a week until 300 then switch to weaneds. As pointed out remember these are guidelines only and each snake is different.

Sent from my LG-M151 using Tapatalk

[Sunnieskys]

Your beep should be on rat pups.

[Hannahrenee]

Okay, I will do a rat pup for his next meal! Thank you for the replies.

[Aztec4mia]

you can also try retired breeder mice, some places that breed their own mice will sell off old breeder mice, these are usually older and larger then the regular mice they sell.

[larryd23]

Here is the thread with the feeding chart: https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...ing-Guidelines

I have found it quite useful.

As others have suggested, I chart everything with our little boy. We weigh him before each meal, record what we feed him (including it's weight), record when we feed, record when he eats, and record when he poops/pees. We also throw in sheds for good measure.

Our 180 gram boy is currently eating f/t rat pups in the 25-30 gram range.

Maybe we'll be less compulsive on our next BP... but I doubt it...

[cchardwick]

Seems like adult mice should be OK? You should weigh your mice, they should be 10% to 15% of the snake weight, so 22 grams to 33 grams. I've had some of my retired breeder mice get as big as 50 grams! I actually like to go back and forth between mice and rats when they are that size.

I only have one snake (out of almost 50 snakes) that is a mouser. She is almost 3000 grams and will ONLY take mice. Last week I gave her a live mouse for the first time instead of pre killed and she ate it. This week I gave her a white rat pup that was almost weaned (live) and she grabbed it and wrapped it (killed it) and decided she didn't want to eat it LOL. All my other snakes will eat either mice or rats no problem at all. The reason I do both is that I run out of rat pups at times and like to feed mice instead. I mainly have my mice for my smaller King snakes, rat pups are too big for those guys.

It's interesting you record all of that data (feeding / shedding / pee /poo / etc.). I used to record all of that but I never used the data for anything other than having it as a curiosity. Now I put a label on each tub with the snake name (morph), the year of birth and the current weight. I only use the weights as a guide for feeding for the rodent size. The only other thing I record is follicle size during breeding. I feed based on body condition so it doesn't really matter if a snake eats or not, if they are fat I'll hold back the food, if they are skinny I'll feed more LOL. The one thing that I really keep track of is my breeding schedule, it's pretty complicated. Some males breed many females and some breed just one or two. Every day I'm moving males around and making sure they are all paired with the right females.