Quote Originally Posted by Thomas Jones View Post
I will feed them a sm-med rat/rats say on Mon. Then again on Wed then again on Fri Sat.
One female that laid 13 eggs for me ate 2 small rats and 1 large and one jumbo in the span of 6 days.If I feed her small rats she will eat 7-10 in one week. They are usually swollen up nice and good after feeding like this. They usually eat like this till they get ready to shed. It makes for more cage cleaning but it is worth it in the end.
No offense but isn't that a little excessive? How big was the girl? If I fed my 3000+ gram girl a jumbo she would let out a huge poop vs smaller size rats where she would have a much smaller poop. I wouldn't want to clean up this girls mess.

Maybe I'm doing it all wrong. I've only bred ball pythons for a few years and never fed any of my girls more than twice a week and even then only small - medium rats. All my girls grow up fine and breed well. Lucky for me I've never had to cool and my ball pythons breed all year round if I let them.

Then again I'm sure I have a much smaller collection than yours. Anyway, great advice on the cooling and prepping for breeding but I just don't agree with that heavy of a feeding. Anyone else care to chime in on this? I'm curious to see if anyone else follows this feeding schedule.