Meal Size Ques?

[J-Ro]

JW, Sidious weighs in at 1208g, i just fed him a 236g rat, hes curentley trying to take it down. Is this rat maybe too big for him?

[Smulkin]

It should not be much bigger in girth (around) than the thickest part of the BP.

It is difficult at best to gauge that from weights alone.

[Adam_Wysocki]

FWIW, all of my ball pythons over 1000 grams only get rats that weight 40-50 grams.

-adam

[J-Ro]

is there like a percentage of there own body weight that they are able to take down?

[Adam_Wysocki]

Ball pythons are instinctually opportunistic feeders ... they have evolved to be able to eat when the food is available and store it for when it's not. In the wild, ball pythons probably eat only a handful of times a year (it's not easy to catch foodn when you have to hands).

They certainly can consume very large prey items, but in my experience, it will ultimately lead to a fasting period while their bodies "catch up" with what they've consumed.

By keeping ball pythons in captivity and offering them food on a regular basis, their bodies can adjust to small regular meals all year long instead of a handful of large meals sporadically throughout the year.

-adam

[Sonja]

Do you feed your ball at night when they are most active or does it matter when you feed them?

[J-Ro]

Usually i feed mine in the afternoon, personally i dont think it would matter to sidious when he ate lol

[JimiSnakes]

I usually feed my snakes smaller more frequent meals...that sounded a little too big.