Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi this is my first time on this forum.
I breed ball pythons and therefore breed rats to feed them.
Well my snakes eat small and medium rats so every couple of months I end up with a surplus of rats that are too big for my snakes.
I don't realy want to deal with trying to sell rats.
Any sugestions on how to find someone who wants large rats?
It seems to me that there should be people out there who want large ones and are waiting for theirs to grow that maybe we could trade each other for the size we need?
Most pet stores don't want adult rats.
I am in central Ohio I would love to get some suggestions.
email me at kmsdesigns@aol.com
Thanks Kathy

>>Hi this is my first time on this forum.
>>I breed ball pythons and therefore breed rats to feed them.
>>Well my snakes eat small and medium rats so every couple of months I end up with a surplus of rats that are too big for my snakes.
>>I don't realy want to deal with trying to sell rats.
>>Any sugestions on how to find someone who wants large rats?
>>It seems to me that there should be people out there who want large ones and are waiting for theirs to grow that maybe we could trade each other for the size we need?
>>Most pet stores don't want adult rats.
>>I am in central Ohio I would love to get some suggestions.
>>email me at kmsdesigns@aol.com
>>Thanks Kathy

Okay, this may sound simplistically stupid...but why don't you kill and freeze them at the size that is right for your snakes???If your snakes won't take live work a little on it and I bet they will. Proexotics has some switchover techniques too. I just work from live to whacked and still twitching to stone cold dead and they will work right over to frozen thawed. Better for all.
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Sonya

Sonya is correct. Another huge benifit to freezing is after about 2 weeks all parasites that your rats may have die off. Easier to sell frozen rats also. Some of my local pet stores buy my surplus. I just get small medical ziploc supply bags for bagging them.

If you dont like whacking them you can buy a small co2 tank from a local welding supply for about 30 dollars filled and about 10 dollars every refill after that. Get a small brass fitting with a plastic hose, from home depot or hardeware store, or the welding supply for that matter. You put the rats or rat, in a bag, or a large tupperware if there is more than one. Put a the small hose in the bag or tupperware. If using a tupperware just drill a small hole the size of the hose. Turn on the co2, and whamo you humanely euthinized them.

Take Care
James

check your email

np
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~David - KDRKreatures
My Main Herps-
1.2 Bearded dragons (Ralph, Artemis, Cheech)
1.0 Veiled Chameleon (Chiquito)
1.0 Ringneck Snake (Striker)
1.1 Eastern Box Turtles (Athena and Mercury)

KDRKreatures-Home Page
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Dear Kathy:

I know that it is generally accepted to feed only up to the girth of the snake. However, in reality, pythons, especially terrestrial species like the ball python can take prey much larger than that.

After reading up a lot about it (from some very prominent experts who have kept pythons for decades--one of them is Dr. Jay Owens on the bobclark site), I experimented with feeding large to my male 500 gram ball python. I have included a picture of it. This rat was 185 grams and it was preceeded by a small mouse. So all in all it was a 200 gram meal for a 500 gram ball python! My BP had no problems what so ever with it.

If your BP are of breeding sized, there is no reason that it would not be able to take jumbo rats. On the conservative side, lots of people on bobclark would have no problem feeding 400 gram rats to 1200 BP's. And that is conservative! They do it without a problem. And the growth that you will see will be phenomenal.

Click on the link below. There is one picture of Dr. Jay's reticulated python eating a rabbit. You are not going to believe the bulge this thing has. I am not saying that you should go that big, but a jumbo rat for a breeding sized BP is not a big deal at all. If you need the address to bobclark's forum so you can talk to Jay himself, it is at bobclark. com and look for the forums.

sincerely. Happy ball pythoning!

Click here to see 500 grm BP eating a 200 grm meal

Thanks for the reply.
I do feed them to my breeders. But I have a lot of smaller Bp's I am raising up. This is my first real breeding season and the whole gravid snakes don't eat thing kinda gave me a surplus of rats that are now to big for the small snakes. And only half of the large ones are done laying and back to eating.
Kathy