After reading many threads here, I think there may be a misconception regarding feeding ASF’s to Ball Pythons. I keep reading again and again that if you feed ASF’s to BP’s that you will have difficulty switching them back to rats.
I’ve bred ASF’s in the past and fed them to my BP’s. Since I had no baby BP’s and the ASF’s took so long to grow, I fed them all of and went with rats exclusively. There was no problem switching over 20 BP’s back to rats. When I was breeding ASF’s - sometimes I did not have enough to feed off and filled in with regular rats. My snakes had no problem going back and forth between ASF’s and rats from one week to the next.
Since I’ve got babies in the racks, I’m going to once again breed ASF’s, but after reading these threads to brush up on what needs done, I was surprised at the number of times of predictions of dire consequences if you fed ASF’s to ball pythons. Some of the threads even warn that it is irresponsible for a breeder to feed ASF’s because a buyer may not have access to ASF's and the ball python will not switch back.
These kinds of posts seem to be posted by someone who knows someone who may have had a problem – at least the ones I’ve read. We all know that these snakes have their individual personalities and there may be some that will not switch back, just like there are some BP’s that insist on mice and will not touch rats. If anyone has any firsthand knowledge of issues switching around rodents, then please post. Otherwise, let’s put this rumor to bed.
I’ve got babies in the racks and they are switching around from mouse hoppers to ASF hoppers to rat pinkies because I cannot get a steady supply of just one feeder for them. That’s why I’m going to start breeding ASFs again. So far, none of the babies have had an issue, except for when the pinky’s were a little too big and that was a size issue, not type of food issue.
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