Time to start on rats..

[Adam_Wysocki]

I have a bunch of adult ball pythons that get anywhere from 1 - 3 mice per week and they are all healthy as can be.

Here are my thoughts (and are in no way meant to offend) ....

I always just thought that it was healthy to switch to rats because they have more fat and protein for growing.

How much fat and protein does a ball python need in a week? Without knowing, who's to say that a rat with higher fat or protein content is "better" than a mouse. To my knowledge there is no study anywhere that analyzes the nutritional requirements of a ball python, so therefore no one in the world knows for sure that feeding rats does any better than feeding mice.

Here's an example of what I'm saying .... if an adult mouse has 4 grams of fat and 3 grams of protein and a small rat has 8 grams of fat and 6 grams of protein (these numbers are hypothetical) ... what if I told you that a ball python, fed weekly, only needs 2 grams of fat and 1 gram of protein to be perfectly healthy and anything additional will get passed out of it's body? Kind of makes the whole rats vs. mice point moot right? Well since nobody knows what a ball python needs, who's to say what’s "right"?

Also some people believe feeding one big food item is better than multiple smaller ones

I've done it both ways ... I'd guess about 5 years feeding large food items and the last 5 doing small small food items ... I have 10 years of data that shows my ball pythons are feeding more consistently and regaining weight after oviposition better with smaller food items than with large ... Once of these days I'll have to get all of my index cards into the computer!!!

As someone that knows a little bit about these animals, I can say that you'll be fine either way ... I was just pointing out that you shouldn't feel like you "have to" switch to rats because of what I believe are a lot of "myths" that are floating around on the internet about what's best for ball pythons. IMHO most of them are cr@p.

-adam