Rats Vs. Mice Question and Testimonial

[PythonChick]

Hi Everyone! This post is collaboration between my roommate (PigsNPythons) and myself (as she is much better with record keeping than I am.)

My roommate and I have had our collection of ball pythons for some time now. We have been around the forums for about six months now, and time and again I have seen experienced keepers testify that there is no nutritional difference between feeding rats or mice.

First, allow me to explain our situation. My roommate (PigsNPythons) and I are college students. We share an off campus apartment with another roommate. I have three ball pythons and she has seven. The most recent addition to our collection happened nearly four months ago. Here is my dilemma. Early on, since I knew that I had a smaller number to feed, and because I don't really enjoy feeding live, I switched all three of my babies over to frozen thawed. The store in our area that supplies feeders only carries frozen mice however. My roommate continued to feed live.

Our snakes are kept in different racks, but these racks are right next to each other and kept at the EXACT same temperatures. They are all handled at roughly the same intervals. In fact, the only differences in their routines is that fact that mine were feeding on one frozen thawed adult mouse every five days while hers were feeding on one rat pup every five days. The rat pups we were feeding were approximately the same size as the frozen adult mice. Every week before feeding, all of our snakes are weighed on a gram scale.

About mid December, we noticed a rather alarming trend. My snakes, the ones feeding on mice, were growing DRASTICALLY slower than those of my roommate, the rat feeders. Here for you are some of the numbers. All of the snakes listed below are 07 babies, and most were of comparable size when this anecdotal study began. They have all been tested and are parasite free (my first worry when mine were growing slower) Listed below are the names of some of the snakes, followed by their weight gain from October 26 to November 29 (Approximately one month), followed by their weights now.

My Snakes:
Pumpkin (07 CH Normal)- 42 Grams gained in time frame, Now 258 Grams
Pastel Boy (07 Pastel Male)- 48 Grams gained, Now 241 Grams
Apple (07 Cinnamon Pastel Female)- 37 Grams gained, Now 311 Grams

PigsNPythons Snakes:
Pecan (07 CH Normal)- 79 Grams gained, Now 313 grams
Lemon (07 Pastel Female)- 78 Grams gained, Now 311 grams
Bowtie (07 Het Albino male)- 115 Grams gained, Now 398 grams
Sweet Potato (07 Het Albino Female)- 104 Grams gained, Now 463
Spaghetti (07 Spider Male)- 101 Grams gained, Now 369

Having seen these numbers, I recently switched to live rats to see if mine would grow faster. This switch happened only after I returned form Christmas break so it has only been two weeks, but the numbers are already showing a remarkable change. You will notice that my Cinnamon Girl is actually now as large as my roommates smallest girls. This is a new development as, in the past two weeks (since I switched to rat pups) she has gained 40 grams. This is AFTER a poop only two days ago and before he meal today. Pastel boy has gained 41 grams in the past two weeks, and Pumpkin has gained 40 grams. Both of them pooed this week as well. This means that in the past two weeks, since switching to rats, mine have gained as much weight as they originally gained during the one month time frame listed above.

Given these numbers, and the change in growth rate since I have switched to rats, I can only conclude that somehow the rats are aiding our ball pythons in growing much faster than the mice were. Just some food (hahaha) for thought.

What are everyone's thoughts on this situation?

[Tosha_Mc]

Either food item provides the nutrients that you snake needs and more - people may argue that this one has more of this or that one has more of that but generally what is required is used and what isn't required is just eliminated in waste. Now the rats do have more fat than the mice - which would account for the weight gain. Think of it like the mousers being on a chicken diet and the ratters being on a pork diet.

[Adam_Wysocki]

What were the gram weights of the mice vs. the rats that were being fed BEFORE they were eaten? Only with that data can a fair comparison be made.

For example ... if snake A gains 100 grams in a month being fed 250 grams of rat in that same month, and snake B gains only 70 grams in a month being fed 140 grams of mouse in that same month, snake B (the mouser) is actually growing more efficiently even though it gained 30 grams less than snake A. Sure snake A grew "faster", but that's because it was offered a larger volume of food. If snake B in the scenario above were offered that same 250 grams of food in mice, it would have gained approximately 125 grams and would have grown "faster" than snake A.

From the data that I've kept over the years, I've found that gram for gram ball pythons grow just as "fast" on mice as they do on rats. BUT, since rats are bigger than mice and you can actually get more "RAT" into a ball python in a single feeding than you typically can with mice they "SEEM" to grow faster on rats.

And if it helps at all ... I feed mostly rats.

-adam

[Holbeird]

I'll be interested to see what people say. I would say try possibly feeding the same size and type of prey she is feeding, only frozen thawed and see what the difference is. That would determine if the growth rate difference was due to the fact yours are mice and hers are rats, or if it's live vs. frozen thawed.

[PythonChick]

Thanks for the quick responses everyone! We are both very interested in everyone's opinions.

Tosha_Mc: That is a neat way to think about it. I would think that would be a good way to think about it, except for one thing. Being an animal science major, I have learned in several classes that the younger the animal, the lower the percentage of body fat as a general rule. I don't know how well this 'rule' translates into an animal with such a quick growth pattern as mice. I would say your assessment would be spot on for adult mice/rats in terms of fat content, but I am not sure how that would translate into a younger rat vs a full grown mouse. I would be interested for any thoughts/ numbers on that.

Adam_Wysocki: I agree that the weight of the feeders would indeed be another vital piece of information. Our record keeping was only done for the sake of making sure our snakes were growing though, and so we did not keep track of the exact weight of the feeders. I do know they were approximately the same size, and, given that her snakes grew twice as fast as mine, I know there is no way that the mice were ever half as small as the rat pups, as they would have to be to make mine the more efficient growers. I am very interested that your years of experience have shown you no apparent difference in the two types of feeders. Thanks so much for posting.

Holbeird: Yes, I had wondered about the possibility of it being the difference in frozen thawed vs. live as well. For the sample of data we gave you, mine were on frozen and hers were on live. During December, however, my roommate was feeding frozen thawed rat pups that she ordered off the internet. If you will notice their ending weights, it is still apparent that hers have maintained their stellar growth despite their food being switched to frozen thawed. We did not want to provide the data from December because we both traveled home for Christmas, and some of our snakes went off feed due to the stress of being moved. Also, we have only one gram scale, which went home with roommate, so I have no weights from the last three weeks in December.

[PigsnPythons]

We really appreciate the quick responses that we got on this post. As we noticed the differences, I became more and more interested in examining the data and trying to understand what was going on here.

Adam, I completely agree that to make this "study" more accurate we would need the weights of the feeders. During the time frame that we provided data for, we clearly were not anticipating needing the weights of our feeders. However, I know that they were always very close in size, and that even if there was a difference, it wouldn't be enough to account for the fact that my snakes grew nearly twice as much as PythonChics.

Holbeird, that is an interesting point! During the month of December, I switched my snakes to f/t rats. Here is the data for dec 5 through jan 5 (all meals fed frozen). I will include the number of times the snake ate during this time frame because some of my snakes went off of fed (probably because I moved them home over Christmas break).
Lemon - 83 grams gained 6 meals (f/t)
Bowtie-63 grams gained 4 meals(f/t)
Sweet Potato-80 grams gained 5 meals(f/t)
Spaghetti-82 grams gained 6 meals(f/t)

For the data posted in PythonChics post, every snake ate 7 meals for the grams gained over the oct to nov month.
Therefore,
Lemon-13.8 grams per f/t meal; 11.1 grams per live meal
Bowtie-15.7 grams per f/t meal; 16.4 grams per live meal
Sweet Potato-16 grams per f/t meal; 14.8 grams per live meal
Spaghetti-13.6 grams per f/t meal; 14.4 grams per live meal

And I do not have the weights of the feeders, I can only say that they were very close in size.
Thanks again for the responses.

[herpmajor]

Yes younger animals usualy have less body fat than adults of the same species. However if the rat pup is the same size as the mouse than the rat will almost always have more fat. So I agree with the theory that the difference in growth rate is do to the higher fat content in the rats. An easy way to see this is to disect one of each (feeder rat, and mouse) and see how much fat each has stored.

[NateDogg13]

I researched the different nutrients each caries and they are a little bit different but not much. Ratio wise theyre basically the same. I mainly feed rat pups about the same size as mice since the pups wont bite back. Ive had both my balls bite the wrong end of a mouse and get bit back. Seeing as balls are from africa, ASF rats are probably the healthiest for them but there is no evidence to prove this. Whatever your ball feels like eating whether it be rats/mice/ASF rats it should be be fine health wise.

[stangs13]

Im going to bring this article up for everyone to look at.

http://www.rodentpro.com/qpage_articles_03.asp

Shows alot of information on different prey items.

[herpmajor]

Cool article.