Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello everyone, I am in a good mood but now, I have a question. I just fed by burm on Sunday a small rat it was live. Today I bought a medium rat and stunned it, and dropped it in the tank. I turned out the lights and left the room dark, I cam back and it was gone. Ok now she just ate her fist stunned actually it just lied there and kicked every once in awhile. But now how long do I feed her on stunned before I go to pre killed them the ultimate frozen. The next time I plan to feed her is Saturday or Sunday, I need to get her to burm size instead of my little garter snake (not thats there is anything wrong with that). I really hate to stun or kill the rats, they look at me while they are lying there like why did you do this to me.

Every python is an individual and will have different quirks that require different methods by you. What may work for me and one of my picky babies may not work for you and your girl. You need to just work with her and learn what works best. But I would not leave a stunned rat in the cage unattended. It can recover and could be in a very deffensive mode. And an animal in extreme defensive mode can be suddenly very aggressive. You could end up with a dead snake. I realize that the rat was a small one and that younger rats are probably not as likely to attack a reptile,.. but it COULD happen and that is reason enough to not do that. I would suggest to start leaving full on dead rats in her cage for maybe an hour at best. At the end of an hour, if she has not eaten it then freeze it and try again in 5 days or a week (newly killed rat,. not the same rat thawed. Only jump to thawed once she readily accepts prekilled food).
Hope this helps.

>>Hello everyone, I am in a good mood but now, I have a question. I just fed by burm on Sunday a small rat it was live. Today I bought a medium rat and stunned it, and dropped it in the tank. I turned out the lights and left the room dark, I cam back and it was gone. Ok now she just ate her fist stunned actually it just lied there and kicked every once in awhile. But now how long do I feed her on stunned before I go to pre killed them the ultimate frozen. The next time I plan to feed her is Saturday or Sunday, I need to get her to burm size instead of my little garter snake (not thats there is anything wrong with that). I really hate to stun or kill the rats, they look at me while they are lying there like why did you do this to me.
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It isn't "Ideas" that fail or succeed,... it is the "Sytstems" which are instilled to launch and sustain the idea that either fail or succeed.>[Me.]

A trick I've used in the past with small pythons that didn't want to eat was place them in a pillow case or similar snake bag with the dead rat and leave them together overnight. In the morning, I would open up the bag and often would find the rat gone. I always did this with thawed rats; you wouldn't want to try to kill one yourself and have it come to in the bag with the snake. That would be a recipe for disaster. This trick always worked well for me, and I never had any problems at all.

RP