Obese Snake?

[Jay_Bunny]

I've been keeping an eye on my female snow corn's weight. I weigh her every few months. She is around 2 years old now, an '06, but I'm not sure of her exact hatch date. The previous weight on her was around 330g. I figured this was a normal adult weight and continued to feed her normally, sometimes skipping a feeding here and there. The other night, it was feeding day and I decided to see how much my young girl weighed. She has been looking plump these days and I didn't want her to get too big. She weighs 400g. Is this normal for a corn snake? I've always thought them small slim snakes. Is she too big or should I keep feeding her normally?

[mainbutter]

post a pic, best way to tell.

We can't tell just by weight and age if she is obese.. length is a big factor in what she should weigh, but eyeballing the shape of the snake is how you tell in most cases.

Corns, in my experience, are easy to overfeed. The one I had as a kid was an eating machine, and always seemed hungry, even though she started to get a bit overweight, and I backed off her feeding frequency.

[mainbutter]

P.S. corns aren't what I would call "small" snakes, they can get pretty darn long, but they certainly are slim. I have seen some incredible sizes of corn snakes, those 8 or 10 year old(or older) corns can be surprisingly big.

[Jay_Bunny]

The most recent picture I have of her is when she hit 330g. I will try and get one today and post it up. She never refuses a meal. She has only refused once when she was eating hopper mice a long time ago and that was because of a shed. Other than that, she has eaten every week (unless I skipped a week on purpose) that I offer.

[Hapa_Haole]

Do her scales look streched out or is the skin visible under them? I know this is a sign of obesity for ball pythons. Not sure if it applies to corns though.

-Dennis

[joepythons]

Its still going to be kinda hard to tell if you post a pic to be able to determine if she is obese.Is she very active?

[Blue Apple Herps]

She should feel fit and somewhat firm when you hold her. If she feels overly squishy, she may be over weight. Corns are slim snakes, but they still can be decent sized. My largest one is ~750g. He's about 5ft long and perfectly healthy. So a corn in the 400+ range isn't out of the ordinary - one of my '06 girls is 525g, but not obese.

[Jay_Bunny]

She doesn't feel squishy at all. I have no idea how long she is, so maybe she's just a big girl, or getting to be a big girl. She's my baby girl so I just wanted to make sure she wasn't getting too pudgy. Thank you.

[Hapa_Haole]

You do know that snakes don't have to be "obese" to be unhealthy right? Just being overweight can also cause health problems.

I'm not taking knocks on you or your snake. Just pointing out that not being obese doesn't signify a healthy snake size. : )

-Dennis

[kc261]

I'm not sure if the lack of this guarantees a healthy weight, but I've seen pictures of overweight corn snakes and read descriptions of them getting "hippy". Basically, their body all the way down to the vent will be large, then the tail will suddenly be slimmer, giving the impression of them having hips.

I'll try to dig up some links so you can see pics of what I mean.