I’ve always fed mice to my sand boas. I was wondering if there’s any benefit or detriment to feeding appropriately sized rats instead?
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From my experience with feeding newborn ball pythons & small snakes, they seem to benefit more from mice than rats. Adult mice and adult rats have the same nutritional value, but a rat fuzzy doesn’t have the same value as a hopper mouse. If that makes sense? The mouse is further along in development and have more to offer than a belly of milk. I believe the reason people switch onto rats is because their snake will develop to a point where a single mouse is no longer a full meal, and feeding multiple mice can be a hassle. Otherwise there is no advantage in feeding rats over mice.
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Yes, that makes a lot of sense.
I don’t know if there’s any real benefit to feeding rats, that being said it really depends on the proper sized prey. From what I understand nursing rats lack alot of protein and calcium while also having a high fat content. For this reason I would personally not feed anything smaller then a weened rat to my KSB’s if they’re big enough, and believe me once they start ot get north of 500g they definitely can!
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I don’t have any close to that size yet, but hopefully soon they’ll get there. Thanks for the advice!
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