Quantity of mice per feeding? Help please!

[Coluber42]

You shouldn't ever have to feed ten mice. Four or five maybe, at the most. Adults don't need 10% of their body weight every week. If I ate as much today as I did when I was 18 or 20, I would be the size of a house!

The biggest issue with feeding lots of little bites instead of one big one is just that it's inconvenient. You feed one, wait for it to go down, hand over another, wait for it to go down, hand over another, wait around, hand over another.... It's much quicker to feed one prey and be done.

[djstarfall]

You shouldn't ever have to feed ten mice. Four or five maybe, at the most. Adults don't need 10% of their body weight every week. If I ate as much today as I did when I was 18 or 20, I would be the size of a house!

The biggest issue with feeding lots of little bites instead of one big one is just that it's inconvenient. You feed one, wait for it to go down, hand over another, wait for it to go down, hand over another, wait around, hand over another.... It's much quicker to feed one prey and be done.

Ahh. So multiple mice doesn't necessarily stress out the bp then? I was wondering if multiple mice might actually cause my girl to expend unnecessary energy by constricting so many rodents.

Also, does that mean that the 10 to 15% guide (wouldn't say it's a rule) only applies to younger, pre adult BPs? If so, how much should you feed an adult, and how frequent?

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[chrid16371]

Ahh. So multiple mice doesn't necessarily stress out the bp then? I was wondering if multiple mice might actually cause my girl to expend unnecessary energy by constricting so many rodents.

Also, does that mean that the 10 to 15% guide (wouldn't say it's a rule) only applies to younger, pre adult BPs? If so, how much should you feed an adult, and how frequent?

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Eating does take "energy" or calories just like it takes energy for us to eat and the more you eat the more energy it takes but as long as the intake is greater then the energy spent its fine. Like I said most people feed a small rat a week so the equivalent of that in mice would probably be good. It depends on the snake though. You may have to feed one less or wait longer for another.

[stickyalvinroll]

Why don't you have access to rats?

[djstarfall]

Eating does take "energy" or calories just like it takes energy for us to eat and the more you eat the more energy it takes but as long as the intake is greater then the energy spent its fine. Like I said most people feed a small rat a week so the equivalent of that in mice would probably be good. It depends on the snake though. You may have to feed one less or wait longer for another.

Ah okay! Thank you chrid. You're very helpful!

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[djstarfall]

Why don't you have access to rats?

I don't have rats available because it's not on the approved list of animals that can be sold in my country

If I really need to, I'll have to bring back some from the neighboring country but that will be a risk

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[Coluber42]

I don't have rats available because it's not on the approved list of animals that can be sold in my country

If I really need to, I'll have to bring back some from the neighboring country but that will be a risk

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I guess that's a good reason. (Although you might check whether the rules are different for frozen dead ones; if the reason rats are restricted is that they can become a problematic invasive species if they escape, frozen ones don't tend to breed very much. If it's because they can potentially carry diseases that are easily transmissible to local wildlife, dead ones might still be off the menu)

Mice will be fine, and you won't ever have to feed ten of them at a time. You'll have to get a sense for what's appropriate as your snake grows, but if you're being reasonably sensible about it, you probably won't be underfeeding. And if the snake seems hungry all the time or looks skinny or is losing weight, just feed a bit more. If it's getting pudgy, feed a bit less. But anything like that is likely to happen over a pretty long time scale, so plenty of time to adjust feeding as needed. You could also try chicks, quail, gerbils, etc, if they're convenient and available. Anything warm, fuzzy, and about the right size should be fine.

Also, it really doesn't take very much effort for an adult BP to kill a mouse, and it certainly takes less energy to swallow a small prey than a big one. The snake isn't going to work off its entire dinner that way!

[Crowfingers]

if the reason rats are restricted is that they can become a problematic invasive species if they escape, frozen ones don't tend to breed very much

this made me chuckle