Feed whatever your snake will eat on a consistent basis and what you can easily obtain. I feed exclusively mice to my 40-someodd Ball Pythons, even to the 2300g females. All adult Balls need to grow and thrive is around 50-65g of food a week. If that means 2 medium adult mice or 1 weaned rat, then who cares what prey type it is. As long as the weight adds up to an appropriate amount, the snake will grow and do just fine.

Also, if you feed live, mice are easier as they won't outgrow the snake in a week(they never outgrow the snake). Plus, you can vary the amount of mice the snake gets per week if it's an adult. My adult males sometimes get 1 mouse, sometimes they get 2 or 3, depending on if they've been breeding, or have been off-feed. If I want to buy a large order or live mice, I can easily keep them in a small space. Rats, however, need alot more ventilation and bigger caging, with less to a cage.

I don't think this female looks underweight(she's glowing)..

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-Becky Brown, RVT-
1.0 Lemon Pastel Classic Jungle,1.0 Black Pastel,1.0 Enchi,1.0 Yellow Hypo,0.1 100% het Butterscotch Hypo,0.1 66% Poss Het VPI Hypo,3.24 Normals,1.1 Spider,1.1 Yellowbellies(BHB),1.0 100% Het Pied Classic Jungle,1.3 66% Poss Het VPI Axanthic, 1.1 Poss Het VPI Snow,1.1 100% het Genetic Stripe

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• rats vs mice & temp - OmarMorsy, Sun May 4 15:49:09 2008
• RE: rats vs mice & temp - cenobite74, Sun May 4 16:49:51 2008
• RE: rats vs mice & temp - snaketatter, Sun May 4 16:57:07 2008
• RE: rats vs mice & temp - dsreptiel, Sun May 4 17:25:46 2008
• RE: rats vs mice & temp - balls4all, Mon May 5 03:08:53 2008
• RE: rats vs mice & temp - HOTRegius, Mon May 5 09:19:14 2008