Rat Sizes

[Magpie]

I go to 250g for the carpets and the waters get the ex breeders.
Agree 100% though, you should not feed too many large rats to your pythons.
I'd prefer to use weights, but everyone rings up and says "I want (insert size here)" and I ask "What sort of weights do you want?" knowing that diferent sizes mean diferent things to diferent people and they reply "I dunno... just (insert size here.")
Much easier if people say 30 rats weighing from 50g-80g please.
That's life

[dugadugabowbow]

I always talk in weight it's the only way to get exactly what you want, stuff all the weaner, fuzzie etc talk.

[rodentrancher]

Hopper mice and rats are about 3 days before weaner size. They hop around everywhere. We usually only sell our rats by weight. Weaners weigh 45 to 50gms. Mice we go by age. They are weaned at 3 weeks. Cheers Cheryl

[Sdaji]

Yeah, I go by weight too when doing my own records and stuff but when I buy rodents and ask for weight I usually get asked "what type is that?" as in fuzzies, weaners etc. *sigh*.

[Sdaji]

Is everyone sure that feeding a rat high in fat is all that bad? Many animals do really well if they get a bit of extra fat, oil is pretty much the same as fat and we've all heard of people using mutton bird oil as a supplement (although I'm in the group which would never use it on their herps). Baby seals are able to grow extremely quickly because seal milk (in some species) is over 50% fat. Just a few minutes ago I was in a genetics lecture and they used a genotype in blue tits (birds) which allowed them to open milk cartons and eat the cream from the top of the milk, the extra fat in their diet being such a benefit that the genotype spread and has become almost fixed across Europe. I've often wondered if feeding the occasional obese rodent might actually be beneficial, it's pretty much only humans that suffer from eating too much fat, and up until a few hundred years ago it was something we had trouble getting enough of too, it's only now that we eat deep fried fatty rubbish as our staple diet that too much fat is a problem, but snakes aren't people.

For most animals, fat is extremely nourishing and beneficial. My guess is that for wild snakes, obese lab rats would be really good, for captive snakes which probably move around less, I'm not sure, but wouldn't be suprised if it would be good, especially for reproductive females or underweight snakes.

[dugadugabowbow]

As you said large rats contain high amounts of fat, most pythons aren't equiped to deal with such hi levels all the time.
Mutton bird oil shouldn't be very often and i personally wouldn't touch the stuff.
One large rat every now and then would be ok, but constantly feeding large prey can cause "fatty liver disease" all pythons and im sure some snakes can develop this some more so than others e.g BHPs, their diet in the wild mainly consists of reptiles with low fat levels, more than a few captive BHPs have come down with this condition and once they have it there seems to be no real cure.
I have a feeling that bigguy was one of the first people to recognise this(please correct me if i'm worng Bob) and i'm sure he would be able to tell you more about this.
This is the main reason i don't feed large prey items, instead i feed multiple smaller items.
The other reason is that the good bits of a large prey item don't always get digested,there is so much of them and they take longer to fully digest.

[Bryony]

i have no idea.......
at work we go by age eg 21day old rat/mice ect
i go by centimetres.....its not the best but i don't know any other way