Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello,

I apologize if I am supposed to post this in the health and diet section, but I can't quite figure out how to do so.

The local pet shop only has frozen baby mice that are too small for my two ball pythons. I am goign to order online for the 1st time. My question is what size should I order and where do you recommend ordering from?

My female ball is 5 months old and 22 inches long, and about an inch and a quarter at her thickest part. I don't have a scale so I don't know how much she weighs. My male is about the same size as her.

I live in chicago, and will be ordering the frozen mice/rats a.s.a.p. Sugesstions on vendors and size of prey would be very helpful to me.

thank you,

jen

Hello,

I would buy about 25 to 50 rat pups and about 25 weaned rats. I have had several snakes this size and it takes about 25 pups to get them to be eating weaned size rats. I would also get a scale and measure their weights. Most Ball Pythons can eat around 25 percent of there body weight easily. So if your snake weighs 100 grams than feed it about 25 grams of rat. Try and feed once a week, but feed it appropriately. I would feed multiple pups each week until you reach between 2 to 3 pups per feeding. Once it is eating 3 pups a week it will easily eat one weaned rat each week. If the snake wont eat multiple rats in a feeding than try and feed it twice a week with the pups until you get on weaned rats.

I hope that helps,
Bill

As far as companies go I have only used two: Rodent Pro and American Rodent Supply. I would recommend both to anyone and have never had any real issue with either. I will say of the two, Rodent Pro seems to have had a cleaner product (less poop stuck to mice) and more consistent size (the two bags of small mice I ordered from American Rodent a while back had quite a variance in size, but this wasn't the case with the bags of larger mice ordered). My reason from switching to American Rodent Supply is purely financial. If you spend so much you get free shipping so for the same amount of money I'd have spent with Rodent Pro I got more mice.

As far as what size to order, IMO just get whatever size you're feeding now and also some larger so that when the snake grows you'll have that size on hand. I have found most companies are fairly standard when it comes to their sizes so what is a large mouse to one will be a large mouse to the other (with slight variance). Rodent Pro does have nice pics on their website if you have questions about what size you'll need. I know I was a little worried when I first started ordering from the net that I would get either too big or too small.

Hope it helps,
Dan
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