Isis ate!!!! More Questions!

[SlitherinSisters]

I'm so glad I joined this site!!!! My poor snake, see if I ever listen to the pet store's advice again

I have a couple rats I'm using as breeders for their babies and I had babies for the first time yesterday! It was so exciting! Anyway, I put one of the rat pups in with my baby last night and this morning it was gone! I was a little worried that she might not be able to eat it because they are quite large, but she did!


So my questions:

Should I keep them live a few more days and try to feed her again? She was still about 50 grams before she ate.

And if I freeze them and switch from live to F/T will she refuse them?

[JD Constriction]

CONGRATS!

The hard part is hopefully over

I personally like to get a few meals into them before trying F/T. I'd suggest offering her another live pinky in 4 days and see if she takes that one too.

Eventually the pinks/pups will become too big for her before she can eat them all. When they get to be fuzzies I would freeze them and then give her a week off and then try the f/t. Remember that is she doesn't take it right away to just leave it in with her overnight....she still might pick up the f/t and eat it

My 2 cents...hope that helps. Good luck!

[rabernet]

Woo Hoo! Way to go Isis!!!!

I think that John gave you some excellent advice!

[SlitherinSisters]

CONGRATS!

The hard part is hopefully over

I personally like to get a few meals into them before trying F/T. I'd suggest offering her another live pinky in 4 days and see if she takes that one too.

Eventually the pinks/pups will become too big for her before she can eat them all. When they get to be fuzzies I would freeze them and then give her a week off and then try the f/t. Remember that is she doesn't take it right away to just leave it in with her overnight....she still might pick up the f/t and eat it

My 2 cents...hope that helps. Good luck!

I hope it's over!!

I'll try again in 4 days then. She didn't eat the live one right way either. She didn't seem terribley interested so I left it in there (10pm). I have no idea when she ate it, I didn't bother her till morning.

I'm so happy

[Argentra]

Congrats!

Sometimes the bad starters just need a chance to be left alone in the dark. I STILL cover the tanks of both my youngest BPs once they've taken their mouse, just in case.

[Wh00h0069]

Congrats on the rat babies and the your snake eating. I feed my hatchling ball pythons live rat pinks. I suggest feeding her live rat pinks every five days, until she is big enough to take a rat the next size up. The prey item should be no thicker than the thickest part of the snakes body. I feed all of my ball pythons live. I used to try to feed f/t, but stopped becasue most of my balls wouldn't eat. I didn't see any reason to starve them when they would readily take live. There is nothing wrong with keeping her on live, but if you would like to switch her to f/t, I would let her get used to eating live for a while before you try to switch her. Balls can be very picky eaters. Anyway, hope this helps.

[scales owner]

Hi ther congrats .....Again lol. Anyway I feed mine once a week and don't worry they can eat rats that you might think are WAYTO BIG! Mine eats 1 large a week and they are big larges. Hope any of this helped. Take care.

[SlitherinSisters]

Congrats on the rat babies and the your snake eating. I feed my hatchling ball pythons live rat pinks. I suggest feeding her live rat pinks every five days, until she is big enough to take a rat the next size up. The prey item should be no thicker than the thickest part of the snakes body. I feed all of my ball pythons live. I used to try to feed f/t, but stopped becasue most of my balls wouldn't eat. I didn't see any reason to starve them when they would readily take live. There is nothing wrong with keeping her on live, but if you would like to switch her to f/t, I would let her get used to eating live for a while before you try to switch her. Balls can be very picky eaters. Anyway, hope this helps.

Thanks for the info. I would love to have live feeders on hand at all times, but I don't want that many rats! I'm going to get her eating as much as I can now, freeze some and I should have another litter of rats in 2 weeks.

[SlitherinSisters]

Hi ther congrats .....Again lol. Anyway I feed mine once a week and don't worry they can eat rats that you might think are WAYTO BIG! Mine eats 1 large a week and they are big larges. Hope any of this helped. Take care.

I was really surprized she could eat it! I didn't expect the rat pups to be as big as they are! I even had 9 of them! It's nice to know she can eat though! That ought to get her weight up.

[frankykeno]

Congrats on the success feeding. Sometimes leaving them overnight with their prey just does the trick. Try that again on the next feeding (the overnight thing). If it worked, go with it for now. You've been given some excellent advice in this thread.

As far as size, remember you want to compare her biggest girth to the size of her prey, not her mouth or the thickness of her neck. Snakes can open their jaws something like 150 degrees and their bottom jaw is not attached in the middle by bone like ours is nor has the same type of joints that we have at the connection to her bottom and top jaws. In other words she's built perfectly by nature to take prey that is big and whole.