Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Greets,
A Question to the black rat owners

How many adult mice/what size rat does your adult black rat eat? and what is it's food schedule like? every 7-10? or a little more infrequent. There does not seem to be much information on how much food a fully grown black rat eats/needs... sooooooooo anyway I just saw these posts of people with massive black rat snakes! and my first thought looking at my whiteside was wow, you are gonna be sooooo much bigger than the biggest corn i ever saw Thank you for the good herp keeping info...,

badcow

I feed my black rat one or two large mice (depending on the size), every 8 days. He is nice and healthy with no obesity what so ever. Take a look!

He was 66" about 2 weeks ago when this was taken.

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1.0 Corn snake "Warpath" (KY locale)
1.0 Black rat snake "Havok" (KY locale)
1.1 Black rat snakes "Punisher and Mystique" (MO locale)
1.0 Eastern Yellow Belly racer "Nightcrawler" (MO locale)
1.0 Albino Black rat snake "Malakai" (Dwight Good stock)
1.0 Everglades rat snake "Deadpool" (Dwight Good stock)
0.1 Greenish rat snake "Rogue" (Dwight Good stock)
1.1 California king snake "Bandit and Moonstar" (Coastal phase)
1.0 Prairie king snake "Bishop" (KY locale)
0.1 Black king snake "Domino" (KY locale)
0.0.1 Eastern Milk snake "Cable" (KY locale)
0.0.1 Eastern/Red milk intergrade "Omega Red" (KY locale)

Good luck and Happy Herping
Brian

I believe that an adult would do well on 1-2 appropriately sized mice per week.

I have an '02 black rat than is around 66". I have been feeding him 1-2 XL mice or small rats every 7 days, but I'm cutting him back to every 14 days because he seems to be getting obese. I believe that he is so heavy because he gets any mice that my corns, gray rats, and yellow rats do not want each week in addition to his regular feedings. I usually thaw out 2 rodents per snake, and there are times when they (corns especially) do not want to eat a second rodent. So there are times when he ends up eating 4 mice instead of 2 at a meal. He is like a garbage disposal and will eat as much as I offer him.

You have to love that appetite though!

Michael

Greetings,

Once again thank you (both of you, and any future posters) for the information. The 1-2 XL mice (or any "overflow" sounds like what I was expecting, I just looked at thoes pictures (like the one above) and thought to my self damn, these baby's may be eating almost like a boa. Cannot wait until tiamat grows to 66 inches.. still have yet to see a picture of a whiteside black rat that big.. anyway thank you again

-badevilcow