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Posted by patricia sherman on November 08, 2002 at 22:53:29:
In Reply to: Next Larger Size of Prey? posted by blondemoment on November 08, 2002 at 20:05:02:
:By the next size of prey, do you mean adult rats? I was looking at the rats when I purchased the last bunch of mice, and they seem so big! Would he graduate to baby rats, or can I give him an adult? Sorry to sound so ignorant, but this is the first rodent-eater we've had. (We have a couple of Ribbons and a couple of Dekay's Brown snakes)
You said that this rat snake is about two-ft long? At that length, he'd be too small to be taking a full-sized mouse, let alone four of them! I have 36", two-yr-old snakes, weighing over 150 grams, that are filled by taking one adult mouse or a near weaning baby rat (two-wks plus a couple of days).
Please measure and weigh your snake, to obtain an accurate estimate of what he should be able to ingest. Measuring length may be done by running a string along his back (in incremental stages), or by photographing him beside an object of known length (i.e. ruler) and then marking off dots along his depicted length and in distances equivalent to the known spacing of the ruler's inches. Girth may be measured by encircling his body at its thickest point, with a light string or thread, then taking the resulting length and dividing by 3.14. Weight is most easily obtained by weighing a small container on a dietary scale, then putting him inside and subtracting the weight of the container from the weight with him inside it. If he's too large to use a dietary scale (measures up to 450 grams), then he's a heckuvah lot larger than three-ft. since I use such a scale for slender snakes over 40".
If he is, in fact, taking four adult mice per meal, then he can take a four-wk old rat.
Tricia
