You can use either rats or mice, I usually feed all my younger ball pythons mice. And I'll usually keep the mice in case one refuses a rat, sometimes it's the other way around, sometimes I offer a mouse and they refuse then will take a rat. I actually like mice the best because they breed like crazy and are so easy to produce compared to rats. And since I breed them they don't grow too big for my ball pythons like rats do. Rats grow super fast and if you don't feed within a few weeks they grow to be really huge, that's where my Reticulated pythons come in handy LOL. For me it seems like feeding small rats the size of mice is really a waste since I can grow them up to be a much bigger size in a short amount of time. For my bigger ball pythons feeding one medium rat is equivalent to 3-4 mice, and my Reticulated python is getting so big he just ignores mice because they are so small LOL. He is already up to jumbo rats! I have yet to have a snake that will only take mice vs rats or have a preference for colors, i.e. white rats vs grey / black / brown. Seems like it just depends on their mood on that particular day.
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