feeding mice

[bpandrew]

So I've been fighting with tinkerbell since last November trying to get her to feed consistently, and its gone terrible. So today I gave in and tried a live mouse, well today I witnessed what appeared to be a whole different snake! She started stalking as soon as she saw it, struck at it (a first), and seemed to not care that I was watching. So being as excited as I was I ran to the store and picked up 2 more. Again she downed them like nothing!

So I'm going to stick with mice for a bit to make up for lost time, and hopefully make weigh by November. Shes 900 g right now, so how much do I feed her?

[Skittles1101]

If you want to feed rats...why don't you just scent the rats with mice? I have to do that with two of my females who were VERY picky and inconsistent...one of them is now taking f/t weaned rats scented with mice and has doubled in size...just food for thought

[bpandrew]

I've tried that a few times with no luck. I know mice are far from ideal, but she's a pain in the butt! Lol

[Skittles1101]

That's interesting. Well I'd try to match the amount by grams...same grams in mice that you would feed a rat...does that make sense? lol.

[Skittles1101]

I just wanted to add, that my spider female who refused so many times unless it was a mouse...would only eat ONE mouse per feeding. If I offered a second one she'd stick her nose up at it. That's when I decided to thaw out a mouse in the same bag as a rat pup, and heat them up together so it was nice and smelly...and she's been eating scented rats since. Good luck! Hopefully she's not as picky as mine was lol.

[bpandrew]

Thanks!

[bpandrew]

anybody know a good rule of thumb for what percent of the snakes mass to shoot for in prey size? I usually just go buy size, but cant do that with mice.

like for example if shes 900g and 10% is the ideal then she should have a 90g meal.

[bpandrew]

Anybody?

[Jeo123]

Rule of thumb is generally 10-15%, but it becomes less accurate as they get bigger and it should probably be slightly less.

[bpandrew]

Cool, thanks