I'm new to the forums so bear with me here. Anyway, I have an 8 year old Ball Python who is about 4 to 4 1/2 ft long and I generally feed him a small rat every week. I had a friend pick me up a small rat from a pet store, one that I normally dont go to. Anyway, he brought back the rat and I opened the box and the rat was not a small, more on the medium size, much larger then he's used to, somewhere around the size of two small rats put together. I was questionable on whether to feed it to him or not, but i decided give it a try. I put the rat in the cage and he struck and wrapped it immediately. After 10 minutes of my snake staring at the dead rat, to my surprise, he began trying to ingest the rat. I was unsure if he was going to be able to, but 15-30 minutes he ate the whole thing, much longer then the 5-10 min it takes him to swallow a small rat, but thats understandable I guess. My question is, should I keep him on the medium rats now, and if so, how often should i feed him now, or should i just go back to small rats?