Weight and Feeding

[Pollard89]

Currently my black pastel male is 5 months old, weighing in at 266g and for the last four weeks has eaten 2 rat fluffs once a week. I'm just checking to make sure this sounds about right for a male of his age as some people claim that their males have been up to a breeding weight of 600g + in 6 months, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[Skittles1101]

They all grow at different rates, I have two sisters from the same clutch that differ in weight by close to 200 grams and they eat the same damn thing lol. Rat fluffs, I'm trying to visalize what those are, do you mean fuzzie? Or pups? Either way, that sounds about fine to me. As long as he's reacting satisfied and hiding for about 2 days after feeding then it should be enough.

[The Serpent Merchant]

By 5 months my males weigh more than 266 grams. The best way to determine how large of meals to offer is by weighing the snake and rodent. T
You should feed your snake a rodent that weighs 15% of yhe snakes body weight every 4-7 days. (so a snake that weighs 100 grams should be fed a 15 gram rodent)

[Pollard89]

Thanks for the quick replies, LGray23 the ones he's feeding on at the moment vary from just starting to grow hair to all hair visible, he does exactly what you said as well and hides solidly for 2 days after feeding, however the issue I was having wasn't that he wasn't eating enough, I was just worried about over feeding, he seems to be growing fine in lenght and girth but his head seems to be staying small, it may just be me though! SerpentMerchant I will definately weigh his food items at his next feed to see if this can help!

[Skittles1101]

No you're definitely not over feeding him, if anything it's slightly under. Sounds like fuzzies to me, I'd try a pup, or weaned rat I agree that weighing the food will help a lot. I have a hard time measuring how wide the rat is as opposed to the snake, so weighing takes the guess work out of it A small digital food scale would do.

[UpNorth]

I grabbed some frozen weaned rats on the weekend and it is very difficult to gauge size by looking at them. All 5 looked close in size, but after I got home and weighed them, they ranged from 33g to 56g, and my snake is only 222g. All the rats had less girth than my snake, but obviously the 56g was far too big for him.

[Pollard89]

I think that the weaner rats might be the way forward then for me after I've expleted my current supply , just by looking withought weighing I can see that his girth is matched to the girth of the weaned rats, however I was still just worried about the size of the weaned rats body and head compared to his head, I heard that you should not offer food items with a head larger than the royals, is there any truth in that?

[The Serpent Merchant]

I think that the weaner rats might be the way forward then for me after I've expleted my current supply , just by looking withought weighing I can see that his girth is matched to the girth of the weaned rats, however I was still just worried about the size of the weaned rats body and head compared to his head, I heard that you should not offer food items with a head larger than the royals, is there any truth in that?

They can unhinge their jaws for a reason they can easily eat rodents 1.5x larger than their heads without problem. Just try not to feed your snake meals that are that big on a regular basis

[Skittles1101]

If you're worried about trying weaned at his size, try a step down. Rat pups are larger than fizzies, and worse comes to worse if they are still too small you can feed him two pups. Your best bet is to invest in a scale though.

[Pollard89]

Haha cheers for that reminder SerpentMerchant, I'll be sure to bare that in mind, on a serious note though it's good to know about the 1.5x larger size! LGray23 I think I may be miss-understanding sizes here, I always thought pups were smaller, I moved mine up from pups to fluffs!?