Healthy weight for adult? (pics)

[Dianna]

I adopted my 5-6 year old female BP about 2 1/2 months ago. She is approx 4 1/2 feet long. Her set up was lacking many important features, and according to her previous owner she was being fed 2 mice every week "or so". The previous owner had been unemployed for a long while, and I got the impression they were tired of buying snake food and perhaps had not been doing so on a regular basis.

Since I brought her home, I have been feeding her 3 plump adult mice every 10 days. She has not missed a single meal.

I have finally purchased a scale so that I may weigh her and her meals. Today she weighs 1280g, this is with a belly full of three mice (she ate on Friday) and has only peed thus far.

I have read other people's female BPs weigh up to 2000g! To my untrained eye (I'm new to reptiles), she looks healthy. I can feel her spine slightly, and I'm unsure if this is normal for a BP.

Is she perhaps just a petite girl, or should I try feeding her every 7 days (rather than 10) in an attempt to slowly raise her weight?

Here are a couple pictures of my sweet baby...

[rabernet]

I've got a female that's over 3000 grams, and it's not unheard of for mature adults to weigh 4000+ grams.

Based on her age, she is small, and if you could, I'd recommend changing her over to a small rat once every 7 days.

With that said, she doesn't look emaciated, but underweight females (for their age) tend to catch up for lost time once they are able to eat a more appropriately sized meal on a more frequent basis.

[pavlovk1025]

Like Robin said, she doesn't LOOK to be too bad off. Just switch her to rats and shel'll gain any lost weight back fast.

And off topic, but that blushing is ridiculous on her. Very nice.

[JohnAvilla]

Beautifull snake! She doesn't look bad but she could definitely use some more weight. I would not switch her to rats just yet though. At this time of year there is a good chance that she will stop eating in the next month or two and refuse to eat until spring. I have a male that goes off of feed for six months every year. One of my other snakes eats sporadically this time of year. Since you don't know her habits yet I would go with what she is used to so as to insure that she gets as much nutrition as possible rather than stressing her out. It may not even be possible to get a snake that age to switch. All the balls I have switched were under a year old. The best bet would be for you to stock up on XL mice. I have an adult male that is 5 years old, 4 1/2 feet long and weighs 1975 grams on empty that eats 2-3 XL mice every seven days (same snake that goes six months). The XLs can usually only be gotten with any reliability at expos and off the internet so if you don't have a freezer you can put them in you may want to breed a few. If she goes off of feed, the easiest time to get her to switch is the first meal she takes. Try an unscented med rat. If she doesn't want it try scenting with a mouse or mouse bedding. If this doesn't work, you can try chicken broth. This is all under the ussumption that you are feeding FT or PK though. If you are feeding live you will have to get tips from someone else because I start mine on FT right out of the egg and really don't have experience with switching live feeders. Good luck!

[trott]

Switch to appropraite sized rats and she'll round out nicely. Much more protein in rats. Kinda like us eating Steak vs Tofu. lol Actually a bp will do ok on mice just better on rats.

[iCandiBallPythons]

That is one hot normal..