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Weight gain in snakes

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diamondback1

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Does anyone know whether a snake would gain weight faster eating rats rather then mice or vice versa? Through prior dealings it seems to me that snakes gain weight faster with the rats. Any info would be appreciated as I am trying to add a little weight to some of my colubrids before cooling them down.:)
 
I have 2 male Regius that hatched within 10 days from each other and the OLDER animal is stuck on mice and weighs in at 192 grams.

The younger guy has been on rats since his first meal ( pups to start) and he is at 512 grams.

I have had a few animals that I have seen this trend with..

Rats all the way for me.
 
Does anyone know whether a snake would gain weight faster eating rats rather then mice or vice versa? Through prior dealings it seems to me that snakes gain weight faster with the rats. Any info would be appreciated as I am trying to add a little weight to some of my colubrids before cooling them down.
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Matt,

In IMHO it depends. Body weight gain in reptiles is related to body mass accretion. This will be done by depositing mostly muscle in young animals, and muscle and fat in adults. Both baby mice and rats contain a lot of water in their composition. As you can imagine you won't gain muscle or fat mass by "eating water". I'm not a big fan of power feeding reptiles. Fat deposits around the internal organs can lead to health and problems and impair reproduction. My personal preference is thus to feed adult mice. On a similar wet weight basis an adult mouse contains more "dry matter" (protein, fat, minerals, and negligible amounts of carbohydrates) than a rat fuzzy of the same size/weight. Fat deposits in the baby mouse or rat are also very low, thus the energy supplied is less compared to an adult feeder. In your particular case, and particularly because you are dealing with colubrids (depends on the size of your colubrids) I would prefer adult mice. But that's just my personal preference.

Good luck!

:)
 
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