losing a little weight...

[zennygirl]

so alfy has been off feed for about a month or a little more now and today is the first day he has looked skinnier to me. his temps have dropped a bit and the cool side has been in the 70's, the warm side is about 85-90, but he always spends all his time on the cool- so i'm switching bulbs back to the higher wattage to get the temps back to norm and i will try to feed him again soon after. my question is, how much weight can be safely lost? is there a time to worry or is fasting through the winter completely okay?

[oorob00]

i dont know about how much of a weight loss is bad but the ones i had last year all went from about October to February without eating.

[zennygirl]

did they lose weight?

[oorob00]

yes they did but i dont know how much because i didnt have a scale then.

[Adam_Wysocki]

so alfy has been off feed for about a month or a little more now and today is the first day he has looked skinnier to me. his temps have dropped a bit and the cool side has been in the 70's, the warm side is about 85-90, but he always spends all his time on the cool- so i'm switching bulbs back to the higher wattage to get the temps back to norm and i will try to feed him again soon after. my question is, how much weight can be safely lost? is there a time to worry or is fasting through the winter completely okay?

How much weight loss is ok is generally a measure of how big the snake is to begine with ... it's ok for a 2200 gram snake to lose 200 grams, but not ok for a 300 gram animal to do the same. In general if your snake was healthy going into the winter, fasting is normal and will have no ill effects, even with little weight loss.

A fast caused by a heavy parasite load instead of normal winter fasting coupled with weight loss could be a problem.

You'll have a better chance with your snake eating by upping the temps. 95 on the hot side, 82-84 on the cool. Warm snakes are more active and alert and more hungry! ... When snakes are cool their metabolisms slow down and so does their interest in food.

After bumping up the temps, it may take a few weeks for your snake to start eating well again. It's certainly not expected for it's appetite to come back in a couple of days or hours. He/She needs to be convinced it's going to stay warm for a while and that takes some time.

Hope this helps.

-adam

[Jack_Hammer]

Adam is 100% correct, but... How old is your snake? If this is your snakes second or third winter, it could be love. Around this time of year alot of snakes go off food and go lookin' for love. My male hasen't fed since Oct. 16th. however little weight has been lost and he is constantly crusing his enclosure. My temps. had not changed, but he had. I'm really looking forward to putting the female in with him towards the end of this mo. Hopfully he will then satisfy his needs, and start to feed again.

What ever you do, don't panic. I had a ball go off feed for seven mo. she was a LTC in my care for about two years and one day desided she wasn't going to eat. I did every thing right, temps, humidity, she just wouldn't eat. Then seven mo. later she started right back up no problems. I bred her the following year and she laid eight perfect eggs that out of whitch eight perfect babies poped out.

Don't sweat it. Just keep offering food on your regular feeding schedual, and sooner or later he/she will start to feed again. If you're really that concerned, take a fecal in to your vet and have him/her check it out. If your snake was healthy to begin with, this is very normal.

[Adam_Wysocki]

Just curious .... Why are you waiting to pair him up with the female?

[Jack_Hammer]

Well... He's a het. for albino that I bought earlier this year. The female Het. I bought to pair him up with is too small to breed this year. All of my normals have been together already. I didn't want to pull one of those out just for him. So, I bought another normal female to breed to him this year. The 20th of Dec. will be the end of her quarantine and that is why we're waiting. Better safe than sorry.

[Adam_Wysocki]

ahhhh ... i know exactly what you mean ... good luck!

-adam

[zennygirl]

adam yes helpful thank you. i was having trouble upping the temps because with the higher wattage bulb it was getting too hot (108 :shock: ) on the hot side and doing nothing to the cold side. (my snake was not in there when i was testing temps) i'm getting him a taller cage this weekend and hopefully the higher wattage bulb will work better when it's higher up from the substrate.
and jack no i don't plan on breeding him. there's enough ball pythons being bred out there i don't want to make them the next iguana. (no offense to breeders whatsoever) plus i could never handle selling babies.
oh, and he is 4 and in very good health and nice and fat to begin with, that is him in my avatar so i'm sure you all are right and he will be fine. it is just my first winter with him so i'm being nervous mommy.