burmese python feeding

A:He'll eat anything you put in front of him. After all, he's a Burm. =) You can continue to feed your Burm rats, but if you really want it to gain some length and girth, you'll need to move up to larger prey items (rabbits, etc.) as it gets bigger. As for right now, though, I wouldn't worry about it. You can feed it chickens or ducks later, if you want to. In our experience, poultry is a perk for Burms (and Boas) if you want to breed them, as birds carry an enzyme that encourages ovulation. Gotta warn you, though; If you feed your Burm a bird, you're going to have the nastiest messes to clean up. The quills of the feathers don't digest and theres alot of oils that, well, don't proccess real well. Hope this helped. Tim & Tanith EDIT: Joeparker- 20 years of breeding with a higher probability of producing and larger clutch/litter stats. It may be a crock, but statistically its worked for us, especially with boas. The years we fed just rats and rabbits, we produced on average 120 to 160 babies, not to mention a high slug count. The years that we introduced poultry into their diets, our average has consistantly been between 280 and 310 babies. Thats a significant enough increase that even if the chicken method is a crock, I'm going to treat it like a lucky rabbit's foot and use it anyways. Sorry about the use of the word "neccessity" up there. I'll change that.

A:Poor rats :(

A:1. What do you mean by makes a mess? Defecates in there or just climbs in and causes water to spill over the top. If she's climbing in and spilling some out, put less water or give a dish she can't climb in. The humidity's a little high, but not too much. A smaller water bowl will lower it. 2. If she's only getting rats, I'd say two or three jumbos a week. She should be eating three or four pound rabbits at that size. I recommend rabbits over chickens. Since she's a female, you'll need to get her off of rats eventually. You can't feed a 16 foot, 200 pound snake rats! I had the same problem you're having with one of my females. She would only take rats. The only way she would take rabbits, I hate to say it, was if they were covered in rat blood. And sometimes I also had to pull the old switch-a-roo, shake a frozen thawed rat in her face to get her excited, and pull it out and throw the reabbit covered in blood in front of her when she struck. It was a pain in the butt to have to do this, but after a few times like that, she recognized the rabbit smell as food and now takes them with no problems. And feeding larger meals means you don't have to feed as often. 3. I feed in the cage with some long tongs. The snake never sees my hand enter the cage. While feeding in separate enclosures may work for some people with smaller snakes, I think this is dangerous when done with large snakes. I have owned Burmese pythons for years, and they all have amazing feeding responses. Reaching in a feed box to grab a 10 foot snake that is still hungry because it only got a couple of rats is a bad idea. You're going to reach for it, and the snake is going to strike. It's in feeding mode, so it's going to constrict and the more you fight, the harder it will squeeze. A 10 foot Burm can easily kill a grown man. It's happened many times. I never get bit when grabbing my snakes. They don't mistake me for food. They'll often come to the front with their head up hoping for food when I open the cage, so I tap them on the head with something like the handle end of a snake hook (definitely don't use your feeding tongs!) and they put their head down and I can safely grab them. As for waiting until they go "poop" as one answer suggests, I disagree. My larger Burms have a very slow metabolism and may only go every month or two. I'm not going to wait two months to feed them. And there are no digestive problems from feeding before they defecate. The food is in the stomach and the fecal matter is in the large intestine. Two separate places, having no effect on each other. Good luck!

A:http://www.whozoo.org/students/stamoo/pythonhtml.html

A:Never let live mice run around in the cage. Ever. You won't be able to sell it if its got chunks taken out of it. He might just not be hungry. Make sure the tank is at a proper heat level and humidity level. Keeping his tank at the wrong levels can make them not want to eat. Ambient air temp throughout the day should be 85-88 with a basking area of around 90. At night the tank should go no lower than 78-80. Humidity around 50-60% is good. Higher around shed. Never, ever use heat rocks or anything like that in the enclosure, the animal can easily burn itself. Since it seems you're not interested in keeping the snake, I suggest finding it a more suitable home, and soon. He won't eat when not kept correctly. Your baby snake will end up being a 10 foot beast soon enough, and it only goes downhill from there with improper care.