Feeding Schedules and Weight Gain..

Im not trying to raise monsters here.. but my boys seem to be growing extremely fast ;)

My spider has greatly slowed down in the past month or so, while my normal is getting to be a fatty!

Right now...depending on the mood of the snake - Im doing 3 mice every 7 days or if they are nice.. a small medium rat every 7 days.

Their growth in the past 4 months -

Spider:
Got him on 3-15-10 -
First weighing on 3-22-10: 217g
As of today - 7-12-10: 596g
Gaining: 379g in 4 months.

Normal:
Got him on Jan 15thish
Weigh in on 2-15: 133g
Same Weight in as Spider 3-22-10: 172g
As of today - 7-12-10: 605g
Gaining 433g in 4 months.

At what point so we say - ok - you are gaining really well - now lets slow this down a little and move to feeding every 2 weeks or so - or is there really no time limit and you stop feeding every 5-7 days when they start refusing food.

Well if you go by the 10-15% of their weight you have been way overfeeding already.

Keep on the 7 day schedule. A 500 g can easily handle a small rat. and I don't see how 3 mice are over feeding. Unless the mice are humongous. I would keep as long as they are eating good. Everything will change when the temps start to drop, and then it's going to be...."why aren't my snakes eating" lol. Mine were gaining close to 100 g's a month when they were younger too. It's so nice to have hungry balls.

I feed my males slower than my females, you want your male lean and mean(physically) :P

Once a week one meal period for my males.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by GoingPostal

Well if you go by the 10-15% of their weight you have been way overfeeding already.

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the mice are pretty small ;) not "tiny" but hmmm.. maybe 10 weeks old?
my local pet store only seems to have small mice in stock and recently i have been feeding my own mice. Sadly.. im out of feeders lol. fed them all! luckly... in a few weeks i will have more! (yay for horny mice!)

Glad to hear im going on track - I dont want to power feed them. I have no reason too lol - I have no females! (hope to change that in two weeks) ... but even with a new female.. it will be a baby so a long time out before breeding =]

My normal is gaining like crazy right now too. 2 weeks ago he was 390g, just yesterday he was 473g. Hes still very lean, you can see the muscles in the body contract as he moves. I feed him a small rat every 7 days. I hope i can get him to be around 600g by the end of August.