Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We have a 1 year old male Ball Python. When we got him last April he would not eat frozen no matter how much I tried. As soon as I put a live mouse in though he began to have no issues eating. Since then I have fed him 1 live adult mouse every 7 days till the last 2 months I have increased it to 2 mice every 7 days. Is this enough? Should I begin feeding him small rats at this point? He is a little over 2 and half feet long and very thick healthy & has already shed 6x in the 9months we have had him. He's an awesome snake and while we got him for our 8 year old obsessed reptile son I love the snake just as much as he does. I guess I'm just afraid he's not eating enough. I read about people feeding more then I do & then I've read the opposite. I'm just trying to get a better idea of an average amount he should get per week. Thank you

A snake can eat something the size of the biggest part of it's body. If you're snakes girth is at least the size of a golf ball or a little less he/she should be ready for a small rat. What I would do if it were me, I would take the snake with me to the pet store and compare the small rats to your snakes size. That's just me though. Most likely your pet shop may carry hopper rats and I would ask to see if they do. Also on feeding the snake live mice, you always want to stay with the snake and keep an eye on the feeding because we have all heard horror stories of mice/rats chewing on the snake. So you never want to leave them alone with a mouse running around in the cage.

If your male is eating mice routinely just keep him on mice.....
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Thankyou! I was actually wanting to keep him on the mice but I wanted to make sure that was fine to do. The rats our pet store carry are considered small rats but in my opinion they never look small enough. I can drive an hour to get smaller rats from a reptile place but I do not like to drive that far. His girth is larger then a golf ball, he's actually pretty big compared to others I've seen.

I always remove him from his cage and feed him in a tub & stay with him till he's done. So, if I continue with mice is 2 per week enough? I assume I will know when he needs more (by his behaviour) but does 2 seem about right for now? Thank you

If he is bigger around than a golf ball you may want to start feeding three mice.

I will try 3 next week and see how he does. He seems pretty content after 2 but there's apart of that thinks he would eat more if I offered them to him.

I have a pastel male that's girth is around the size of a golf ball or bigger. I would feed him three mice. I purchased him and an early 2012 female pastel from a lady in Nashville. When I purchased him on Dec 16th she said he had went around three weeks without anything to eat and he still hasn't ate. He has went 7 weeks without eating. He won't touch a rat so far so next week I am going to try a couple of mice and see if he takes interest.

Start feeding on rat pups as soon as possible.

No need to go with mice
No need to go with live

Just go with FT rat pup as babies and they will have a healthy and nice life, eating what's cheaper and easier. Even easier when you want to sell them.
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