Basically Aleesha I'm sort of like a dog on a scent hon. If something strikes me as interesting I start googling and one site leads to another and another or another thing to google for. I love scientific papers though they are sometimes harder to dig up. I just keep digging though, sipping coffee and reading. Eventually I find evidence or backup for things I've been taught to do or instinctively figure make a lot of common sense. If you ever need them I have most of the links saved, I just don't like to flood the threads with them LOL.

Sarah, what they were specifically referencing in that study was snakes that tended to eat very large prey items (larger than girth) and also in relation to the time occurring between meals. From my understanding of this process, if the snake isn't eating for a bit of time, it basically shuts down it's digestive process, routing less blood to it and so forth. This saves the snake energy loss as these are energy sucking organs and it can't waste that energy when there is no food intake happening. Then if it eats a very large prey item (larger than girth) it has to kickstart everything back up (sort of a cold start if you get what I mean).

Digestion is a big enough deal with snakes so digesting overly large prey items, being fed infrequently or fasting just makes this process that much more enery consuming and less productive for our captive lovelies. To me this just shows me the scientific proof that what Adam's been saying all along about weekly feeds of smaller than girth rats being the way to go to keep ball pythons in top condition.

Makes sense on several fronts for me....

1) by feeding consistently and weekly the snake's digestive track will not be triggered to temporarily atrophy

2) smaller prey items each week will not place as much digestive stress on your snake

3) less stress of any sort has got to equate to a healthier snake, that's just common sense to me

4) smaller prey items do not require massive energy outputs to digest them therefore the snake should retain more percentage of caloric value from it's prey

So basically I figure this Sarah. Whether it's one rat or a few mice that equal the volume of that one small/small rat, as long as the snake's system is kept tuned up so to speak - not overfed nor fasting - it has got to work at it's most efficient and healthy level.

As far as how many mice, all I can tell you is our biggest exclusively mouse eating snake here is Doireann (05 Normal Female). She weighs as of today 1,268 grams. She generally eats 4 or 5 adult mice on feeding night. I'll try to remember to weigh them this week and get you a total weight for what she's eating per week if that helps but they are just basically normal adult size white feeder mice.