Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This isn't about how much a snake can or should be fed but rather about the rats themselves. How do you judge the size of your rats? What I mean by this is what do you qualify as a wean, small, med, large? I know alot of people say they go to the pet store and ask for medium rats and that is what they feed their snakes. However, I went to a pet store here locally and bought one small, med and large and weighed all of them.
small=62g
med=122g
lg=145g

now to me the small is a weaned rat, the med was a largish small and the lg was a small med. I really don't weigh our snakes prey items but a large is obviously a large rat, one that is capable of breeding, and a medium is close to breeding size. It just kinda confuses me sometimes when you see people talking about feeding a 600g snake a medium rat. In my book there is no way a snake that size can eat a medium rat, well at least not MY mediums.
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Josh & Krysty Hutto
J&K Reptiles

Various Ball Pythons:::

1.0 striped vanilla
1.0 spider
1.2 Citrus Ghost and hets
1.2 Albino and hets
2.3 het Pied
0.6 50% poss het pied
1.1 Pastel (male has additional gene going on with him)
a bunch of normal female breeders
a bunch of normal female holdbacks and several rescued normal males

0.1 columbian boa, she's a feeding monster, controls my
over production of rats, lol
0.1 brazilian rainbow boa, another rat eating monster
1.1 corns

a BAD dog is MADE not bred, support the American Pit Bull Terrier as the greatest breed of dogs on Earth!!!!!

I usually just go by Big Cheese Rodents' sizes since that's who I ordered from before I started raising rats. Of course, I don't really weigh my rats (I raise my own) so I just choose rats that I feel are appropriate for each snake. I do think petshop rats tend to be on the small side, though. Whenever I've had to buy small rats I've gotten what I would call weanlings, and the mediums were more like smalls. There's no way my 600g girl could eat Big Cheese mediums but she could eat the pet shop mediums I've bought in the past.

Big Cheese sizes:
Weanling: 36-50g
Small: 50-89g
Med: 90-150g
Lg: 180-279

Hope this helps,
Shelly

I've always fed by weight - because I used to breed my own rodents. I find it really frustrating now to go off of the "small," "med," & "large" that are sold everywhere; there doesn't appear to be any standard! The size I want most is right in between what my current supplier calls "small" and "med" rats.

My scale is very accurate, I just have to do some math to figure out what everybody talks about in grams because my scale will only measure in pounds, to the hundredth (not ounces). The smalls I just bought (frozen) seem to be anywhere between 0.05 and 0.08; my mediums are sitting around 0.41; in grams, my math says my smalls are 22.7 to 36.3, and my mediums are around 186.

~Rebecca

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1.0.0 Dumeril's Boa '04
1.1.1 Ball Pythons
[1.0.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]
[0.1.0 '05 Het Orange Hypo (Sylvia)]
[0.0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)