Feeder Rats

[JTull89]

I'm new to the forums so bear with me here. Anyway, I have an 8 year old Ball Python who is about 4 to 4 1/2 ft long and I generally feed him a small rat every week. I had a friend pick me up a small rat from a pet store, one that I normally dont go to. Anyway, he brought back the rat and I opened the box and the rat was not a small, more on the medium size, much larger then he's used to, somewhere around the size of two small rats put together. I was questionable on whether to feed it to him or not, but i decided give it a try. I put the rat in the cage and he struck and wrapped it immediately. After 10 minutes of my snake staring at the dead rat, to my surprise, he began trying to ingest the rat. I was unsure if he was going to be able to, but 15-30 minutes he ate the whole thing, much longer then the 5-10 min it takes him to swallow a small rat, but thats understandable I guess. My question is, should I keep him on the medium rats now, and if so, how often should i feed him now, or should i just go back to small rats?

[Nate]

Welcome to the forum!

Small rats are typically just fine. Bigger meals too often could lead to a feeding fast that could last weeks or months.

[starmom]

Weight of the snake and weight of the prey are important factors. Given that your snake is an adult, I would imagine that a prey size of about 100-110g would suffice. Do you know the weight of the rat?

[JTull89]

umm...i have no idea how much it weighed...it just seemed bigger than what he was used to.

[syearout]

I feed all my ball pythons small rats. The only time I give a "medium" is if I have one that needs to be fed off, then i'll give it to one of my bigger girls. In the wild, these snake don't "get the perfect sized meal every saturday at noon." It isn't gonna hurt anything, but I'd stick with the smaller rats.

[JTull89]

Alright, cool thanks for the help!