Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have a few balls and they have been giving me a promblem eating? i hear balls like mice more than rats? is that true? i breed my own rats so no promblem for me to feed them mice.i will just start breeding mice. i realize that i would need to feed them a few when they get bigger due to mice sizes. do mice smell worse than rats when breeding? also are mice more aggresive towards ball than rats? any help is appreciated.

My experience, Balls like food. They will eat what ever you give them as far as rats and mice. The problem is they sometimes get familiar with one or the other and don't realize that the other is food too. My current crew will eat rats, mice, fuzzy, hopper, crawler...anything that does not bite first.

Mice are less aggressive than rats. I have found that the mice explore and check out the enclosure. Rats will hide and become defensive and even attack. Strong suggestion for prekilled/frozen/thawed. They don't bite nearly as much.

I think my mice always smelled worse.

This is, again, only my experience. Hope it helps.
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Lead us not into temptation. We can find it on our own.

It's also the season for problem eating, so I wouldn't stress over it too much. Just go a lil longer between offering prey
My experience has been that my animals do better on rats than mice, and my juvenile snake is definately growing a lot quicker on rats than she was on mice.

Having owned rats for years, and just recently got back into breeding mice...the mice definately stink way more! Couldn't tell you why, but they do.

~jenny
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1.4 normal ball pythons (Cindy, Darwin, Periscope, and dah bebbies)
0.2 rescue chinese water dragons (Yoni and Linga)
1.0 rex rat (Scurvy)
1.0 gerbil (Yerbul)
0.1 mice (Cute Girl Mousy)
0.1 bunny (Spazz)
1.1 betta fishes (Vicious and Killer)
2.2 great danes (Shasta, Odysseus, Merlot, and Watson)
1.0 fat fuzzy mutt (Smokey)
1.1 cats (Thidwick and Turtle)
3.0 horses (Buddy, Sam, and Scout)
1.0 goat (Billy Jack)
0.0.1 chupacabra (it ate our chickens)

jenny.thegreenes.org

in my experience, some like rats, some like mice, some like everything, some barely like anything. i've got mouse eaters that are growing faster than my rat feeders. go figure!
i've bred rats and mice in the past and rats are definitely cleaner than mice. rats don't go to the bathroom where they eat, mice will.

Rats all the way.. I have about 20 rats, and one preggo mouse; I swear, the mouse smells worse than the rats combined.
I hyave heard people say that they have snakes that will only eat mice.. if it turns out that one of yours is like that, then just be prepared to need mice for its entire life.. but if mice are cleaned out regularly, they really are not That bad.. just seem to need cleaning more often than rats.
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Ball pythons: 1.4 normals.. 1.0 Spider. 1.0 Graz pastel. 1.1 100% het albinos, 1.0 100% het or. ghost. Also 1.0 BCI boa. 0.2 horses (paint mares) 1.0 black cat, 1.0 fiancee, 2.3 clawed frogs. And a ton of freshwater fish and breeder rats.

As for the stink...mice excrete a musk which they use to mark their territory. When you clean their cage, they go into overtime musking, so it always smells!

Rats all the way...the only snake I feed mice is my '05/'06 Sinaloan, and she will be eating rats as soon as she is able.
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Thanks,
Amy
www.myboids.4t.com
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1.14 Normal ball pythons
1.0 Pastel ball pythons
0.0.1 Sinaloan Milk Snake
0.0.1 Plains Garter
0.1 Normal Kenyan Sand Boa
2.0 Anery Kenyan Sand Boa
1.0 Mid-Baja Rosy Boa
0.1 Leucistic Texas Rat
1.2 Dumeril's Boa
1.2 BCI
That's Just The Snakes!

Most of my bps will eat anything I give them, but I only have 4 snakes. I was breeding mice for a while and I think they smell much worse than rats. As for the aggression, I have read that rats are more aggressive but so far they seem the same to me.

One good thing about breeding rats is that the babies are much larger than baby mice, so it can save you the time of raising up mice. My rat babies were as big as full grown mice (~40grams) in about 12-14 days, 60 grams at 20 days, and 125 grams after a month.
Picture at 18 days....

Hope this helps.

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1.1 Normal Ball Pythons (Snakerton and Mathilda)
1.0 Het Albino Ball Python (Walter)
0.1 Albino Ball Python (Perrie)
1.2 Breeder Rats (Seamus, Fiona, Spotticus)

my ball pythons love rats , they even like them better than mice this is what I will feed them for now on rats live of course