Feeding

This is the section that drives more 2 a.m. anxiety than any other. Ball pythons have the most theatrical feeding-refusal behavior of any commonly kept snake. Most of it is normal. Most of it is not an emergency. We will tell you what is.

What to feed

• Adults: rats, frozen-thawed. A weaned-rat-to-small-rat sized prey item is appropriate for the average adult; large adult females may take medium rats.
• Hatchlings and juveniles: hopper to weanling mice for the smallest snakes, transitioning to rat fuzzies and pups as they grow.
• Single-prey adequacy: ball pythons are rodent specialists and do not need dietary variety. A snake that eats only rats its entire life is not malnourished.

Rats vs. mice — the bodybuilder analogy

Different snake species do best on different prey because their body types differ. Ball pythons and large constrictors are the bodybuilders of the snake world — high-protein, lower-fat diets produce the best long-term body composition for them. Mice are higher fat and lower protein than rats, which is fine for endurance-runner snakes like cornsnakes and kingsnakes but produces a less optimal body composition in adult ball pythons over time. Rats hit the protein-to-fat ratio adult ball pythons actually need.

Practically: an adult ball python fed exclusively on mice will need several mice per meal to match the nutrition of a single appropriately-sized rat, which is harder on you, harder on the snake, and runs a less efficient feeding cycle. The transition from mice to rats is one of the more important moves in the snake's first year — we cover transition techniques later in this section.

On taking another life to feed our snakes

Before we get into the mechanics of feeding, we want to say something about what feeding actually is. A rodent dies so a snake can eat. That is the trade we participate in when we keep a constrictor or a python.

We do not take joy in this. We have never met a serious keeper who does. The good ones treat feeder rodents with the same respect they treat any other animal in their care — housed humanely while alive, dispatched quickly and properly, never tortured for content or entertainment. …