F/t or live?

[Stewart_Reptiles]

What is the maximum time you leave a live rodent in with your ball python? Is 20 minutes too long before checking on them?

I was against feeding live until three of my female breeders stopped eating for six months at a time using fresh killed rats and mice. They all started immediately after I started feeding live. It's actually easier for me to feed live since I breed my own rodents, it's quick, just move a rat from the rat breeding rack right into the snake tub. They are in the same room, super easy. And now all my females are eating.

That's only for my ball pythons though, I feed my King snakes and retics fresh killed, no problem getting them to eat every time. I also have some small Arizona Mountain King snakes, I feed them live mouse pinkies.

By the way, I raise rats in mice in an ARS rodent breeding rack, super easy to feed and clean in a rack system, takes me about an hour a week to clean them and it feeds 26+ snakes. And I usually have an excess of rats and freeze them and trade them for snakes and such with local breeders.

I would think that on a large scale feeding live to ball pythons would be the easiest.

They have 10 minutes max before I re-check if even, in my experience if they don't eat soon as I drop the rat, they probably won't (at least for adults) and if it is the case the rat just go in it's corner and groom itself.

Hatchling well it depends but than again when you feed and hatchling the prey can stay longer without posing a risk, fuzzy rats have never hurt anything.

The key to really get a strong feeding response is consistency (feeding the same day every week) and pre-scenting the room by leaving the feeders near the enclosure an hour prior to feed, if you do that the rat will rarely have the time to touch the floor of the enclosure.