Ball feeding questions.

[JMurphy97]

I was wondering if it is possible to over feed my ball. Being a rookie when I bought it I stocked up on fuzzy mice and fed it them but after reading I found out that I should be feeding adult mice to a baby ball. So I've been feeding one adult mouse every seven days or so and I was wondering if I should wait longer in between feedings or feed more often. I was gonna move up to a weaned rat because the snake didn't have a problem with the adult and the weaneds look bigger but not too much bigger and I heard rats are better then mice. Let me know what you think.

[Adrya]

Ball pythons are chubby things anyway so you won't see much of a lump when you feed them... rat pups to weaned rats are good starters for baby ball pythons... depends on how big the baby is....and it's best to get them started on rats instead of mice or they will be reall difficult to switch from mice to rats later on.

If the snake is 1 year or less of age, feed once a week, if one year or more, two weeks.

But feed the snake prey the same girth as the largest width of the snake... like stretch out a f/t rat, and compare it to the largest part of the body on the snake... and I hope you're feeding frozen/thawed, not live.

[jpaulson]

Excellent comments from Adrya. But to answer the first part of your question, yes, you can over feed. During the natural part of digestion, gases are emitted. If you do not give your snake enough time to absorb/disipitate the gases, and you continue to feed, the gases could reach a lethal level. Someone correct me if I am wrong, but a snake needs about 3 to 4 days depending on prey size to complete the digestion process.

Balls can be finicky eaters, so you should switch them to rats as soon as possible, as Adrya said.

[JMurphy97]

Well the snake already pooped from the last feeding and it was last wednesday so I will go and get a rat pup this afternoon. I'm feeding frozen/thawed but my buddy told me he feeds his live food. I dunno, I don't want to take that risk plus I want to switch to rats. I also never had a problem getting my ball to eat. It is even quicker now that I got some feeding tongs. I just wave it in front of it and boom the snake is rolling around with it.

[JMurphy97]

What if I feed it something bigger then the middle of the snake?

[VoodooChile]

Depends on how much bigger. Most snakes can eat larger than that, but it is hard on their organs (kidneys, heart..etc) to continually be fed larger prey on a regular 7-10day for juveniles or 12-14 for adults, interval