Food size

[Eryaw]

Currently we are feeding our young retic a small rat weekly. He is now close to 6 ft, should we switch him to a medium rat at this point?

[EL Ziggy]

I'll let one of the retic keepers chime in but I would think a 6ft retic would eat more than 1small rat weekly. My 4ft bull snake eats more than that.

[themeyers]

at 6' my retics usually eat 2xl rats.

[IW17]

Yeah my 6' male eats a large rat weekly and he could easily take larger/more if offered.

[millertime89]

My 6ft retic is eating 1-1.5lbs every other week.

[HP4]

I feed my 3 ft male purple a medium a week. But when I got a 6 ft female purple tiger from a guy that told me he only fed her a medium rat once every 10 days. I was in horror but looking at her she's healthy and as strong as an ox.

[Eryaw]

So I moved him to a medium and he ate it without any issue. He looks extremely healthy and the medium left a slightly bulge but nothing major. I'll keep an eye on him and see if he starts to grow faster. Maybe think about moving him to a large in another month or so.

[themeyers]

it also depends on just how big you want them to be. you can have a perfectly healthy animal that isn't eating all that much. as long as they aren't loosing weight and look to be healthy then it doesn't matter. Jay has a few mainlands under 10' and they all look healthy and breed.

[millertime89]

Jay is really good at growing an animal to a size he wants and getting them breed-able at that size. If you've ever seen pics of his shop you'll know why he wants to keep some breeder females small... lol.

I would skip the larges and go straight to XL honestly. That's in the 1/2-3/4 lb range (roughly) and is probably still a bit small unless you size estimate is off.