Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My hobby hondo is over 4ft now, and about as big around as a big marker. The last weight I have for him was around 600g.

I've tried to keep single prey items up in size along with his growth, but it seems like he doesn't go for mice in the 25-35g range. Instead he prefers two smaller mice. Just today I offered him a 32g f/t mouse, he bit it, and let go, and crawled around it a few times. I then put in an 18g and a 15g mouse, and he ate both no problem.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Once he gets to full size, what amount of weight would you feed? I'm thinking about moving him and my corns from weekly to every two weeks. Any thoughts, advice, comments are welcome.

Thank you.

Dont know how much help i'll be as i've never weighed mice... but I almost always ofer prey items tha have roughly the same girth as the snake but vary the amount of prey items based on age, length, and how quickly the animal is growing.

I have a pair of black milks that eat 2 small rats every 2 weeks most of the time, but i do change it up and sometimes feed 1 per week and on rare occasions will just toss in like 5-6 mice.

Based on your size descripion i would be giving the snake 2-3 large/jumbo mice the same girth as the snake weekly or maybe even 1 small rat weekly. If it wont take prey that large and likes small stuff maybe 3 small mice every 3-4 days.

what temps are you using? just a thought, maybe he avoids large meals because he cant warm up enough to digest them.

He's been looking for a girl for about a month now, so I'm thinking that might have something to do with it. He had been refusing (or so I thought) because he wouldn't touch any of the jumbo mice I had offered him. He would eat some stray pinkies I had around for my hognose. But last time the pet store had small mice, and he ate 2 of them without problem. He is still cruising the tank looking for a girl, but I can tell he is slowing down his searches.

I'm sure his temps are fine. I'm in north Florida and we keep the AC set to 78 most of the day, plus he has a heating pad in the corner, just in case he needs something warmer. If anything, the tank is on the warm side. One day we set the AC to 81 and found him soaking in his bowl. After we dropped it back down to 78, he went back to his hide, so if anything, too warm is somewhere between 78 and 81, which means we're keeping him on the warm end of the spectrum.

It kinda all depends on the snake, each snake will be different. Like I have a male mexican milk who is about 20 in long and could easily take a large mouse, yet he refuses to eat nothing but pinky mice...and about 7 at a time. Then I have a female mexican who is about 10in and she is taking rat pups easy. So there really is no telling, i know there are a few ther guys on here with the same issue because I actually had the same question not to long ago, basically if he eats....he eats lol.