Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have been reading this forum from time to time and talking to people about feeding live vs dead meals. My ball is fairly young, got him several months ago as a captive bred and he is about 23" long. He eats live mice consistantly (except during shedding as I have foun out) but I would like to try switching to pre killed mice. This involves several questions. How do I kill the mice, if frozen then how do I defrost, and how do I start presenting the meal to my ball? I feed him in a separate container so do I just drop the mouse in? The only bad thing I fear is I do not want my ball to loose his natural instincts to constrict incase I do ever feed a live meal again. Sould I wean him from live to dead like one of each at each feeding?

I also have a question about my heat source. I have a UTH and a buld overhead on one side. Does it hurt to use a regular household incadescent bulb or should I stay with the regular "blue" bulb? I am in PA so our winter weather is pretty rough. If I turn the light off during the night, the temp drops to about seventy, so does it hurt to let the light on 24/7?

Thanks for the help,
Mike

About the feeding: If I were you I would just buy rodents in bulk off the internet. www.rodentpro.com is a good source. I personally would not want to have to kill a mouse or rat every feeding so buying them already dead is great for me. Also, its cheaper buying bulk online then one at a time. I also wouldnt worry about your snake loosing its constricting insticnt, my snake always constricts his frozen thawed mouse(soon to be rats) even though its already dead. Hope I helped alittle.

Rob Woods

I'm cheating on this answer and doing a copy and paste of an answer I posted to another question. From the sounds of it, your BP is about the same size as mine, also a captive bred juvenile. BTW, since I didn't mention this in the original answer, I use an old insulated large coffee mug type cup to hold the hot water for the thawing process.

"My ball python, which I've had for about 3 weeks now, took his second feeding this evening. His first was a frozen "fuzzy" 2 weeks ago, which seemed like a rather small feeding. Talking with the folks at the reptile shop, I decided to try him on a larger mouse this time. I had planned on trying a "hopper", but they did not have any of those frozen in stock, so I went with a small adult mouse. I use a kitchen "candy" thermometer to track the temperature of the water that I thaw the mouse in. I use the hot water straight from the tap, which in our house is around 120 degrees F. I place the mouse in a sealed Zip-loc bag, and leave the mouse in the hot water until the thermometer shows a temperature just below 100 degrees (normal mouse body temp is 98.6 F). If the snake does not show interest in a reasonable amount of time, simply remove the mouse and return it to the freezer. Provided it hasn't sat out thawed for too long, it won't hurt it to be refrozen and rethawed at a later date.

I use a pair of long nosed needle nosed pliers to present the mouse to the snake. Some people use medical style forceps. The first time I fed him, I simply dropped the fuzzy into the terrarium and he took right to it. This time, I held the mouse by the tail and jiggled it slightly, and he responded by striking at the mouse and constricting around it. After holding it thus for a few minutes, he worked his way around to the head and began swallowing it. "

I did see your post and the hot water is a good idea. how long does it take to defrost?

I haven't actually timed it, but it seems to me it was about 15 minutes or so. The thermometer is more of a guage than time is. You want the mouse (or rat) to be approximately normal body temperature. Make sure the food animal is in a plastic bag or something else so that the hot water doesn't rinse all the animal's smell off of it, as smell is one of the senses the snake will use to track in on dinner.

The hot water will cool rapidly at first in reaction to the cold mouse/rat. You'll want the water hot enough that the initial heat transfer settles a bit above 100 degrees F. it will take a bit more time for the water and food to cool together, but this is what you need to have happen to be sure that the measured water temperature and the temperature of the thawed food are essentially the same.

I'll repeat what you probably already know. Do NOT microwave the mouse or rat to thaw it. Not only are microwaves notorious for uneven heating, but things like sealed rodent bodies have a nasty habit of bursting in microwaves.