Odd feeding habits?

[kontron]

I noticed a few things our snakes did when we fed them. My snake roswell tends to eat the mice backwards. He often times strikes it in the throat, but eats it butt first. Why is this?
My girlfriend's snake "roo" eats from the head down, like every other snake i have seen. We feed the snakes 2 mice every other week. This is the way the reptile store fed them, so we stuck with their feeding scheduale. Roo will eat the first mouse whith no problem, but she will kill the second one and let it sit there after it is dead. She then seems to size up the mouse to her body, and the room vacant inside her. She will run her nose form the tip of the mouses nose all the way to the butt many times. She will then do the same thing to her body in the area right above where the first mouse is sitting inside her. She has taken as long as 5 minutes sizing up a dead meal before taking seconds. Is this unusual?

Take a look at Roswells feeding picks. I hope to get vids of Roo sizing up her stomach. It is kind of cute.
http://www.ball-pythons.net/modules....ails&album=248

[brian]

well first i would never put two mice or rats in a cage with your snake as he is busy with one it give the other time to attack,eating a mouse backwards can be harmfull if the mouse is big and doesn't fold it's legs right as it goes down it could injured his insides

[Wizill]

2 things wrong here... and trust me on this, it's been discussed a thousand times. you're feeding live, and you're feeding two prey items per two weeks as opposed to the proper once a week.

[kontron]

oh i would never put 2 in at once. they are fed one mouse at a time and the mice are kept boxed in a tottaly difirent box until they are ready to be eaten. i do not know of any local pet stores that sell pre-killed mice, and i do not have the heart to kill them myself. i always make sure the mice he eats are no bigger then the largest part of his body. i usualy ask for the 2 smallest and make sure it is something he can swallow easily. even though i do feed my snakes live prey, i do keep a close eye with tongs at the ready just in case the mouse starts trying to bite. what would be a humane way to kill the mice? my g/f used to slam them against the side of a wall to daze them. what if i keep them in a box place that box in a ziplock back and let them sufficate. i would not put any mice, alive or dead in the freezer. is it bad to feed the snake 2 mice every 2 weeks. i know in nature many snakes will eat multiple small kills instead of one larger one. At least in my experience. I think i am going to switch over to the 1 mouse every week though. i am told this will help him grow faster. is this true?

[Alkaurkharim]

i would not put any mice, alive or dead in the freezer.

Why not? You put dead cow and dead fish and dead pig and all other sorts of dead stuff in your freezer? Why not a dead mouse? You put them in a freezer bag and shove in in there somewhere on the side where they aren't touching anything if it bothers you that much.

And I'm willing to bet that you can get F/T stuff from your local petstore.
Also, I wouldn't recommend putting them in a baggy to suffocate. Suffocation is a long, tortuous death is it not? If you are trying to be humane the most humane way is to kill it quick. Put it in a bag or a pillowcase and slam it against a hard surface, like your driveway.

At the very least switch your snake to pre-killed if you can.

[gozetec02]

I agree with Will. Feeding dead is the only way to go. I know for a fact that PetCo sells a product called mice on ice. They come in packs of 3 and its about 3 bux. You can wack the mouse and dangle it by the tail in the tank with some tongs. As far as a snake taking a mouse backwards, there is nothing harmful in it, i have seen ball pythons take prey in weird ways. I even saw a BP take a live pinky while it was still alive. Feeding 2 mice at the same time could harm your snake by letting air get into the stomach between feedings. Feed only one appropriately sized prey item at a time. I do feed in multiple sometimes when I can't get my hands on a rat but i seperate the feedings by a few days. If you are squeemish about killing the mouse you really need to get over that pretty quickly becuause you cant feed mice all the time. Your ball python will get bigger and a couple of mice just wont do it and you will have no choice but to switch to rats.

[Marla]

Interesting. Apparently Petco has different regional suppliers, because here it's Gourmet Rodent that they sell.

[kontron]

i am not squimish about killing an animal, i just sort of feel bad if i'm the one that kills the mouse. It is true there are other meats, cow turkey, and chicken only in my freezer, but mice are rodents and rodents are dirty, they carry disease. but that's just me, and i am weird like that. i am looking around for pre-killed dinners for my snake. do you have to defrost the animal before feeding your snake? i have never used frozen. back to the other question : is it bad for a snake to eat every other week as oposed to every week? or is it just as safe? i would never go over 2 weeks with out food, even though i hear stories of pythons lasting over a year with out food, i would never make my baby wait that long. i read that when you feed the snake every other week they grow at a slower rate.. is this true?

[Alkaurkharim]

Mice and rats that are bred specifically for feeding don't carry disease, at least I don't think they do. If they did, why would we be feeding them to our snakes ^_^ And a mouse that is say 1-7 days old can't be that dirty o_O

Also, just so you know, getting a store to kill your mice for you, isn't really logical. The whole point of feeding P/K is so that the mouse retains as much body warmth as possible, fooling the snake into thinking its still alive. Plus, it's such a hassle to have to run out to the store every 5-10 days when you need a new mouse. I think this is the reason why most petstores and such won't kill your rodents for you.

Pre-killed, P/K, is referring to a mouse that you kill just prior to feeding, like say it's killed within 5minutes of feeding. Frozen/thawed, F/T, is a mouse that was killed by someone else, usually by a CO2 gas chamber and then frozen. If you get F/T, then you have to thaw it out before feeding. Some people put it on their heat pads to thaw out, some use their heat lamps.

I personally put the mouse in a small ziploc sandwich baggy and fill my bathroom sink up with hot water. I then put the baggy in the water for about 3-5 minutes and then take the mouse out and dry it off with tissues. I then dangle it near my snake and move it around the tank slowly like it is running around and she will follow and strike. Though sometimes she will just go right after it without a mouse dance ^_^

If your snake is between 1-12 months old, I would suggest feeding one appropirately sized food item ever 5-7 days. I personally feed Elysia, my 9 month old MBK, 1 fuzzy evey 5 days. And intent to continue doing so until she is at least 12 months old. If you feed them once every week, they will grow faster then if you feed them once every 2 weeks. Though I have read a couple threads here that say feeding 2 smaller prey items instead of one big one, 2-3 days apart, make the snake grown much faster then 1 bigger meal. I dunno about this myself. All I can say is it seems easiest to feed them once every 5-7 days until they are older then once every 7-10 days is ok.

[led4urhead]

You need to de-frost and then warm up the rodent prior to feeding. There are a bunch of places online to buy f/t rodents. www.rodentpro.com is a good start. I know others here use other places online to buy feeders. Feeding the snake a correctly sized meal once a week is best.