A meal for our raptors begins the day before it is ready to be served. Mice and rats are ordered frozen, so we need to pull the prey items from the freezer in advance to thaw. Pulling the right amount of food requires a little math.
The first step requires adding up the total amount of food we'll need tomorrow. Each bird is prescribed a specific weight of food that may change from day to day to keep their weight in a healthy range. In this example, we'll need 156 grams for all the birds tomorrow.
Then we need to refer to another chart for the next calculation. Years ago I carefully weighed mice and rats before and after removing their intestines. (Raptor food is always gutted before serving to reduce bacteria that may be in the animal.) I determined an average percentage of each prey that is their edible gutted weight. For XL mice, about 75% of the full weight can be fed to the birds.
Breaking out my calculator, I enter the total amount of food we will need tomorrow (156 grams) and divide it by 0.75. I imagine a small drumroll as I hit the equals button and the screen shows that 208 grams of full mice are needed for tomorrow. I add frozen mice to the scale until the reading is close to that target weight, put a lid on the container, and pop it in the fridge to let them thaw overnight!
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