Feeder size ?!?

[arnau666]

hello, i want to be sure that i will give my blood python the right rat size.
he is 400 grams and he has a circumference of 4.7-5.1 inch or 12-13 cm.
what grams should the rat have with these sizes? thank you very much.

[Kara]

I have a female in the 400 g range that eats 100 g rats. Evidently the fro-ro vendor sites consider that a medium, to me they're on the small side (rat-wise, anyway). That is plenty big for the snake & leaves a pretty good bulge in her, but I tend to feed younger animals bigger meals & back them off a bit when they get older.

YMMV...erring on the smaller side isn't going to hurt anything.

K~

[dbassa]

I have a female in the 400 g range that eats 100 g rats. Evidently the fro-ro vendor sites consider that a medium, to me they're on the small side (rat-wise, anyway). That is plenty big for the snake & leaves a pretty good bulge in her, but I tend to feed younger animals bigger meals & back them off a bit when they get older.

YMMV...erring on the smaller side isn't going to hurt anything.

K~

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.

I'll be getting a baby blood in the next few months and I would like to order some frozen rats.

I usually feed by weight.

My ball python and corn snake get rats that are between 10% to 15% of the snakes weight. But bloods are so heavy bodied that at some point you will be looking at some pretty big rats. Would this method be appropriate? I notice that in your example above that your 400g snake is eating 25% of it's weight. Would going down to between 10% to 15% still ensure steady healthy growth or would you recommend a regimen closer to 25% and for what duration?

[Kara]

I don't have a set formula for determining prey size. I go by the individual snake & "where it is" so to speak. The female in question is going through a growth spurt right now. I was feeding her "small" rats every 10 days or so, and she was at the front of her tub looking for another one after finishing the first, so I bumped her up a size. They leave a pretty good bulge in her that is gone within just a couple of days, and when it is time for another meal she is very ready to eat.