Food to Waste Ratio?

[toddnbecka]

It occured to me that when I was feeding my larger carpet python 2-3 mice weekly he produced less waste in general than after the jailbreak/mouse massacre and subsequent switch to feeding rats. With the mice, there would be a fair sized chunk of solid white waste and very little brown. Now there's quite a bit more brown, usually 4-5x as much white, which I believe is the remnants of the bones and minerals. Seems that snakes produce 3 distinct types of solid waste aside from the liquid white urates. Along with the white solid and brown there's also a fur pellet portion.
I'm biginning to think that the incresed brown waste is unused protein from the prey. Aside from the carpet I;ve also seen the same thing with my everglades rat snake, and to a lesser extent the growing juvie bull snake.
One other observation on the subject. My 3-year-old Dominicans are kept in essentially identical setups. One pair typically eats 2 rat pink of 1 fuzzy each week. The other pair was reluctant to switch from day-old quail chicks, and only relatively recently have they both switched over to mice. They'll both usually only take one hopper or weaned mouse, and for quite a long time they were only taking the same single quail chick while the other pair were taking 2 rat pinks.
In spite of the difference in the amount of food consumed, both pairs appear to be about the same size 2 years later, and I've noticed that the pair that eats more also produces noticeably more poop. I suppose I really should weigh the snakes, their food, and the resulting waste to gather more hard data, though the third part would be rather variable since some is left in water bowls, some dries out, etc.

[bigsnakegirl785]

The white is basically calcified urine, aka urates.

2-3 mice are digested separately, which is why there's less waste, each mouse is smaller in mass than a rat. With multiple mice, there's also more fur to bone/meat than a rat. The liquid they expel is mostly left over liquid as my understanding stands. Snakes eating more food will garner more waste.

[macandchz]

bigsakegirl785- this answers a question had. sometimes mac will take 1 large mouse on 2 consecutive days but i find very little poop afterwards. i was concerned that there was something wrong but i guess there's not.