too big to feed?

[FrankieCarbone]

well i weighed my pastel yesterday, and hes not at 356g. Now during feeding day he destroys his meal, and lately hes showed to still be hungry afterwards. I mean he has always done this, but more so now, than in the beginning. I feed him every 5 days, and its usually a 30-35g white mice. When i first got him almost 3 months ago he was 129g, so he has doubled in weight.

Now here is my problem, i have basically 4 sources of where to buy mice/rats here in NYC. the first 2 sources are mom and pop petstores, the problem with those are, they have alot of variety compared to petland, such as they have black mouses, grey, white, etc etc, but basically its the same, they will have feeder mice which are generally 30-38g, and then they will have another section apart with little bigger mice that are around the 45-55gram mark im looking for, but when i ask for them they always tell me "no those arent for sale because there pregnant" then they have small rats which i think are too big, they look to be like 70grams and up, then of course they have jumbo rats, which obvisouly are too big. My third source is petland. Which is pretty plain, they have small mice (30-38g) medium rats (70g +) and jumbos. Then i have a 4th source but thats a no go which is a breeder of ASF's. And he woudl definetley be able to accomodate me with a mouse i need, he will even weigh it for me and all, but its a ASF, and i dont want my pastel hooked on them. SO hes pretty much out of the question.

So what should i do, keep feeding him the 30-38g mouses until he gets big enough, or go crazy and feed him a medium rat which are 70g and definetley bigger than the widest part of his body?

BTW to date, i have never fed him a mouse that has left a lump. And the biggest mouse i fed him was 39grams.

[llovelace]

Yousnake should be able to eat a small rat about 53g, can the mom & pop store order them for you?

[FrankieCarbone]

no, its not like that, i mean the mom and pop shops just buy a whole bunch of mice and they just breed like crazy, there is like 6 different tanks all with a different variety, a whole bunch of small mice, in another tank u have some big ones and small one, a bunch of pinkies everywhere, there not very organized, but the ones i see that seem to be that perfect size and weight, always are "pregnant" or something like that, either that or they are too big, i was at petland the other day and i saw a small "rat" that seemed like it would do the job, but i dont want to give him something too big, or something hell wont take maybe. Today is feeding day and im going to try the mom and pop shop again, and see if i can find something perfect, but its like everytime i go i just end up making the same descision and asking them to give be the biggest they can find in the small mice tank, which ends up being just liek 35g give or take....

[llovelace]

Then feed 2 , until you can get rats of appropriate size, or your snake gets large enough to eat the 70+g rats

[Skittles1101]

My 400-500 grams balls are taking weaned rats, which are much larger than full grown adult mice. I say if you can't get appropriate sized prey due to the availability you should feed multiple mice, since one is not enough.

[Simple Man]

These two ladies have you covered. Multiple smaller items are nutritionally the same as one big one so maybe it is time to offer two! Keep up the good work. I remember when you first joined.

Regards,

B

[RetiredJedi]

According to THIS SITE the "Appropriate sized item is a prey item that has a girth 1.5 times the girth of your snake."

[jason_ladouceur]

have you considered buying your feeders online. a quick search should yield several places you can order what ever size feeder you like for probably far less than you are paying at any pet store. of course you would have to switch to frozen thawed if you haven`t already.

[jason_ladouceur]

According to THIS SITE the "Appropriate sized item is a prey item that has a girth 1.5 times the girth of your snake."

wow that site does say that. of course it also outlines a feeding schedual for snakes regardless of speicies. so i guess baby Naja`s require the same amount of food as green tree pythons. hmmm

[Jared2608]

Appropriate size prey is subjective. Just like two human beings of the same size can eat more or less food than each other, ball pythons of the same size are comfortable with different size prey. You could safely feed two mice and make up the size of one rat, or find one rat and feed it instead.

Like our two resident ladies said, if you can't find one prey item that suits your python, go for two smaller ones. At the same time, don't be afraid to try a SLIGHTLY larger than recommended prey item, because your python might be comfortable with it. I'm not suggesting that you feed giant prey to babies, you need to use your discretion, but I am saying that at heart these are wild animals, and you need to trust a little bit in their own instincts as far as how much they want to eat, and what size they want the food to be.