Feeding adult balls

[starmom]

I'm wondering what size rats are fed to adult balls (in grams!) Should rats always make a lump, even in an adult ball body? Is it wise to top out at about 80 grams for an adult (fed one time per week?) Thanks for your input!

[Nate]

This is a debatable topic...For what it's worth, I feed small rats, one per week, to each adult

[rabernet]

All of mine get 4-5 week old rats, once a week. They're about 40-60 grams.

[kira1123]

at what weight would you consider a bp to be an adult?

[Ginevive]

I feed medium-sized rats to my adults. Roughly 5-6 inches not including the tail, in length, per rat. Large rats are just too big for my snakes. They'd be a big chore to swallow. I would always err on the side of smaller, as opposed to larger.

[qiksilver]

It really depends on what you want to do, some people will say no larger than a small, but see how your snake handles it. My larger females eat medium rats.

[Rapture]

I don't usually feed rats that are large enough to leave a visible lump to my adult balls. Right out of breeding season after a clutch is laid, when the girls are looking real slender I will feed them more than one of the small rats rather than one larger rat. When everyone is looking great I just feed one small rat and they do fine. Once they have reached their adult size, they don't need the food for growth purposes anymore like the younger snakes.

[starmom]

So, I need to jump in here for a minute to ask about gram size. The Mouse Factory lists their small rats at 55g, their medium rats at 80g, and their large rats at 122g. In comparison, the American Rodent Supply lists their small rats at 50-75g, small+ at 75-95g and medium rats at 100-195g.
When you are all saying small, or maybe medium for the larger ladies, what gram size are you referring to?

[qiksilver]

I've never gone into that much detail with food, I don't even weigh my snakes.