Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have found myself in-between prey sizes with my 5 month old boa. She is currently eating f/t adult mice, about once a week. I'm somewhat limited in my selection of prey sizes. For rats they only offer pinkies and fuzzies and then it jumps to juvenile rats. I don't know the weight of them but they're about 35% bigger than an adult mouse, which makes them just a bit thicker than the thickest part of my python. I would really love to switch her over to rats but I think the juvie rats are just a little too big. Should I just keep feeding her adult mice for another month or two until she's big enough to eat the rat? I know some snakes can handle prey that is a little thicker than the thickest part of their body, are ball pythons in that category?

It sounds like you have a few options; you can feed multiple prey items until your boa is large enough to eat a juvenile rat, you can stay on your present course until she's big enough, or you can attempt a juvenile rat now.

You mentioned that the rats are a little bigger than her largest point around, that might be too big, so it might be worth switching her to two rat crawlers a week until she's large enough.

The last and easiest choice is stay on your present path, it sounds like that's enough food to keep her growing. I don't know how easy it is to switch boa's to rats once they've been on mice for a while, but I'm under the impression it's not too hard.

Best of luck!

She's a bit of a fussy eater and will not take multiple food items so I think I'll stick with adult mice for now. I'm adding a couple of snakes to my collection next month so I'm going to start buying frozen rats in bulk which will solve a lot of my problems : )

sounds like u should stay the course if the rat product is a little bigger you could try because a rat compresses in body but if its to big it will look like it ate a ball and then it is very uncomfortable to the snake.Depends how big the snake is length girth let me know happy to help.

25 Ball pythons and growing

The ball python will be fine with a larger rat.

They are a species which can easily take prey items up to 1 1/2 times as big as the largest point in their body.

I routinely have babies with good appetites that grow at a standard rate move up to small (4wk old) rats after about 4 to 5 months. Once you make the jump to weaned rats, bumping up prey item size no longer matters quite so much. Unweaned rodents are higher in fat content, while weaned rodents are full of all sorts of goodies.

~jen
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"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words."
- Anna Sewell (1820-1878)