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Switching from mice to rats

MrMarblz

MrMarblz

Newb Albino Okeetee Owner
I have a decision to make I think. Yadie is about a year old now and she's going through an adult mouse pretty fast. When I feed her one she barely has a bulge and then has the expression like "Is that it?" haha. Now I'm not sure whether to start feeding her 2 mice or to switch to rats. And if I switch to rats I don't know what size. I'm also worried it will be hard to find the right size rat at the pet store. Any advise?
 
MrMarblz said:
I have a decision to make I think. Yadie is about a year old now and she's going through an adult mouse pretty fast. When I feed her one she barely has a bulge and then has the expression like "Is that it?" haha. Now I'm not sure whether to start feeding her 2 mice or to switch to rats. And if I switch to rats I don't know what size. I'm also worried it will be hard to find the right size rat at the pet store. Any advise?
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I have fed my big guy small to medium rats, heck, I give my albino king who is onsmaller medium rats, its the only thing that will keep his apatite down.
 
rats are good to go! Just watch the size and you are fine. Their head is a different shape and is much more dense. You will want to go a little small to make sure the snake can handle the size you are feeding as you are starting out.
 
Rats are great. All my corns are growing so big (or are getting so big) I'm switching most of them over to rats. As said, watch the size, and your snake will do fine with them.

One wierd thing that has happened to me is one of my snakes won't take rats! Ever. he's clearly hungry, but just won't eat them. if I dropo a mouse in he strikes and it's gone in seconds, but no rats. It's the wierdest thing. I'm sure you won't have this problem,l just thought I'd mention it. I just can't figure it out.
 
not sure I should put my 2 cents in or not but.... here it is.... my 2 bigger corns are eating small/medium rats. At first they didnt want to (neither did my boa) but if they are hungry and still wont eat its usually because of the smell. Rats smell stronger than mice. If you really want to switch over and the snake doesnt really want... you can try to 'scent' the rat with some 'used' mice bedding.
 
In my experience I have found rats to be extremely fatty and make corns extremely overweight very quickly. My largest adult is 5ft, 850 grams and he still only gets one large adult mouse ever 2 weeks... It doesn't leave a lump in him but he still gains weight and sheds every month.

My females that I was feeding rats bloated and became very sluggish. IMO mice are all an adult corn will ever need. If your corn is only one year old I would still feed only one large mouse a week, thats all my breeder females get. Sounds like your trying to push your corn too fast!
 
Oops, missed the year old part. One year, for a corn snake, is way to young to start feeding small rats IMO. I give small rats to my 400+ gram corn snakes. I doubt your one year old would need a rat, as Tula said.

And Tula thanks for warning me about the fatty-ness of rats. my female has been gaining weight quickly (and almost acting like she's going to double clutch) but this may be part of the problem.
 
I have fed her pinky rats before awhile ago (because the pet store didn't have the correct sized mice at the time) and she ate them just fine. Some people are saying rats is too soon for a corn about a year old. Are you guys talking about rats in general or large rats? Because if it's large rats then yes I definitely agree. Would you guys maybe suggest feeding two mice? Or just fee her more than once a week. Maybe the mice I've been getting aren't as big as the ones as the "large adult mice" you guys are talking about. But I'm pretty sure they are adult. She just doesn't have much of a bulge when I feed her and still looks hungry.
 
More than one adult mouse a week for a yearling is asking for an overweight, lethargic, obese snake. In fact, I wouldn't even feed my 400gram+ snakes more than one adult a week.

In my experience, rats only make my corns (which are lean, thin colubrids) bloat and gain excessive amounts of weight. From your display picture, that prey item seems to be a fairly good size, maybe on the big side. I would be feeding no more than one of those every 7 - 10 days.
 
That picture is a couple months old by the by. I don't have a scale but she's about 2.5 feet.
 
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