Quote Originally Posted by Sauzo View Post
You would be surprised at how big a prey ball pythons can eat. You cant compare the prey to their head size or you will be thrown way off. You need to look at their mid section and then get prey that is about 1.5 times bigger than the snakes mid section at the preys widest spot(usually the rear hips). The only snakes I would be careful of are BCC which can/will regurgitate if the prey is too big. Never seen a ball python regurgitate because prey was too big. Dottie has eaten rats so big(because of my miscalculation) that when she got it down she literally looked like she ate a football and she almost went into a food coma on the spot but more or less "waddled" back into her hide and I didn't see her for about 3 days And this was when she was around 200-300g, now she just pounds weanling/small rats like they were pez candy at 500g.
Why feed prey items 1.5x bigger? There isn't much need for that in my opinion. Sure you can do, but I can also put my head in an alligators mouth haha! Don't mean you really should. Same size as their widest point is comfortable for them to handle and provides a steady rate of growth if fed weekly.