Just out of curiosity..

[Joci]

What’s the biggest (or smallest) prey item you’ve accidentally fed your snake? I mean this as in when you were a newb, what meal-size mistakes did you make?

Just a question I though I would ask for fun, and who doesn’t like to laugh at their newbie mistakes?

[Godzilla78]

I once fed a LIVE medium rat to my not fully grown male ball python, and he got scratched on the head by the rat claws. He still crushed the rat and and ate it, and his injured scales healed very quickly. I was probably pushing it with food size though. He killed the huge meals so easily though, and grew like a weed, so I kept doing it for a while, but now I stick to small rats, as he is full grown, and doesn't need any extra calories these days.

[the_rotten1]

I've fed some XL breeder rats to my big girl BP. Every now and then one dies and I hate to waste the bodies. It took her a few weeks to digest the first one, but she did it. After that her body was ready and she didn't have much of a problem with the others. Typically, depending on the size of the rat, one XL is almost a month's worth of food, so I wait at least 4 weeks before feeding her again and then start back with smalls. Guess that's the reason she's 2500~ish grams while all my other adult girls are under 1700. That and she's a spider morph. Never had a spider that didn't have a great appetite.

Don't think I've ever drastically underfed my snakes. I gave hatclhing BPs rat pinks a few times, but there's not much difference weight-wise between that and a hopper mouse. Just less hair.

[honeybee]

I was lucky enough to be told by my boys breeder exactly what he was eating (f/t rat pups) and I haven't switched sizes yet as they're still a good size. However, on a BP facebook group I'm in, someone did recently post that they were feeding their bp crickets....yeah. They had loose crickets in their bp cage because it wouldnt eat mice pinkies so they thought that was 'too big'. They were very quickly informed bugs ain't snake food.

They seemed pretty receptive to the criticism at least, so here's hoping theyve since switched to something a snake actually eats. Feeding the wrong rodent prey size I get, but thinking a snake will eat bugs seems like someone didn't do any research prior to purchasing an animal IMO.

[Kerol]

I got from the pet shop once just rat pinkies. My BP was little that time, but not that little and also a voracious eater. The pinks was too little to kill them before feeding, so I gave them live. My BP didn't even bother to squeeze them, just swallowed live as they were. I could still hear the rat squeking after it disappeared in the snakes mouth.

[elleon]

For about the first month or so that I had my beep, I was accidentally feeding him prey that was too small. In anticipation of his arrival, I went to PetSmart and bought a package of small mice, since that seemed about what the breeder said he was being fed. As it turns out, ArcticMice run small for their size, and beep was already too big for them when he came home. I've since found a different pet store to buy my feeders from, and keep a chart in Excel to track how big he is and how big his food should be by weight.

[tttaylorrr]

i was feeding Corny mouse pinkies for the longest time. i was new to Colubrids and obviously hadn't done enough research. he was barely putting on weight and i didn't realize he desperately needed to be moved up in size. i watched the entire time he had his first small mouse, and it felt like forever before he got it down.

he's very close to being moved up in prey size again.

[SDA]

I used to own Savannah Monitors when I was young. I swear those things are the trash compactors of the reptile world. No, I did not feed mine bad food but if I had a rat that was too big it was no problem. Not fitting in the mouth, I'll just bite it in pieces and gnaw at the carcass in front of you with a :cens0r::cens0r::cens0r::cens0r: eating grin. BTW if you ever think owning a monitor lizard is fun, try forgetting to wear heavy duty leather gloves when you pick yours up and it is in a mood.

I did accidentally get a medium rat once for Dante and you would have think I offended him with how he refused it.

[bcr229]

Fed pinky mice to my first ever ball python... because... Petco.

First year breeding I had two clutches in the same hatchling rack, and one was a few weeks older than the other. The older ones were on f/t rat pups, the smaller were on f/t rat fuzzies. One of the younger set accidentally got a f/t pup; he looked like a stuffed sausage with a head and a tail but he did digest it ok. I waited several weeks before feeding him again.

[Ax01]

i fed my 2nd BP ever, a bb Mojo, a live adult mouse. he was punching above his weight class and got bit. he still killed it and ate it tho.




...such a noob.