New BP, underfed?

[mackynz]

I got a 2 y.o. BP yesterday. The guy I got it from said he had been feeding her one fuzzy a week. I measured her/him with a shoelace and the circumference came out to 4 in. When I picked up some frozen mice the employee confirmed my suspicion that she/he should be on small adults. I fed her/him tonight and the mouse was gone in about 2.5 seconds.

Will the underfeeding affect her? I will attempt to post a pic.

[The Serpent Merchant]

No 2 year old BP should be on fuzzes, if your BP is 4 inches in diameter, then you should be feeding it a rat that is about 4 inches in diameter... not small adult mice.

[mackynz]

The mice I have are about the same diameter as she/he is. I have heard rats offer better nutrition, is that why you recommend them?

[The Serpent Merchant]

The nutritional benefits are slightly better with rats, but the real reason to feed rats is because as your BP grows so will the size of the rodents required to feed it. Mice only get so big so if you are feeding mice you will have to start feeding multiple mice at a time, this can be very expensive and time consuming.

Do you know how much your BP weighs? (preferably in grams)

Weight is another good way to determine prey size, a young BP should eat rodents that are 15% of the BP's body weight.

so a 100 gram Bp should get a 15 gram rodent. (100 grams x 0.15 = 15 grams)

[mackynz]

Alas I do not know the current weight. How do you weigh yours? I don't really have a scale that would work well, the vet would probably let me use theirs.

[The Serpent Merchant]

I just use a cheap kitchen scale ($15 at Walmart)

[mackynz]

Brilliant! Thanks.

[LLLReptile]

I got a 2 y.o. BP yesterday. The guy I got it from said he had been feeding her one fuzzy a week. I measured her/him with a shoelace and the circumference came out to 4 in. When I picked up some frozen mice the employee confirmed my suspicion that she/he should be on small adults. I fed her/him tonight and the mouse was gone in about 2.5 seconds.

Will the underfeeding affect her? I will attempt to post a pic.

Looking at the picture, while that's definitely small for a 2 year old, it also doesn't look too thin. Were they really only feeding it one fuzzy a week? I would even go as far as to say it should be on large adult mice, almost large enough for weanling rats, rather than just small adult mice.

Are you 100% sure it's a 2 year old? And it was fuzzy mice? Just seems strange, a snake that's the size and shape of the one in your hand looks like a decent 4 - 6 month old at average weight, not an underfed 2 year old. The back half of the tail on your hand doesn't look emaciated at all, and that's often where the snake looks the skinniest first. A ball python that's only been eating fuzzies for two years would look almost skeletal.

-Jen

[mackynz]

I can't confirm the age for sure, I was told 2. I adopted him from a guy who couldn't take care of him anymore. I can confirm the feeding, he said he fed one fuzzy mouse a week, and one week out of the month he would give him 3.