Feeding Question

[snake novice]

My snakes are a little over 1 year old, and about 30 inches. The place where I get their food has frozen mice as well as frozen rats (of various sizes of course). Right now they are eating 1 adult mice per week. The adult mice are not as big as I had thought, so when my snakes get bigger should I feed them 2 mice per week, or could I try medium sized rats? Is there a difference between rats and mice other then size?

Also, what is the average length of adult snakes?

Thanks for the info in advance!

CZ

[drizzt_19]

welcome to the forum. in my opinon an adult cornsnake of average size could eat a rat weanling.(just taken from mom)
i have a corn that is a year old and shes eating two small mice a week. remeber the "rules" average corn can eat a meal appr.1.5 times its widest girth.you could try to put another mouse in with your corn and see how they do with two mice.i hope this helps

drizzt

p.s. the rules are in parantheses because from what i've heard and beleive is that there are "no hard and fast rules about corns".

[Jr Nimeskern]

I think that a medium rat might be a little big for a corn... no matter how big they got... but what I know of rats, is this, rats have a better nutritional value, rats are just better for snakes, if I did feed rats to my snakes I would feed them weanling-small rats, like Gregg said remember the 1.5 rule, try not to feed over that, if you feed a food item which is too big it could cause a infection in the digestive system since the food would be sitting in their for quite some time digesting, Ive also heard that it causes fecal blockage, and another thing which I have experienced is that if a big food item is offered, the snake could eat it, and since the food item so big, it stretched the snake out and when the snake rubbed against something that was semi sharp (the hide she uses) then she sorta cut herself, its just alot better to feed 2 smaller items of food then 1 big item... IMHO