Eat less, grow more???

I have a friend I met last year and we both bought snakes together in one order. At that time we were talking about husbandry and he told me how he was only feeding 1 MOUSE to all his snakes a week, regardless of size. Even his adult snakes only got 1 MOUSE about 40 grams, once a week.

I laughed at him a little.

Now, 1 year later, his snakes are all over 1000 grams??? These are 2011 snakes....

He insists that he only fed one jumbo MOUSE per week to each of them, and recently tried rats, once a week, one rat that was 60 grams. That was it.

I know those are the same snakes I bought together with him. They really are all over 1000 grams in one year. He isn't the kind of person to lie about the feeding schedule, you never know but he's not the type.

The snakes I got in the same shipment as his are only about 600 - 700 grams, one is super fast growing at 900+grams, the smallest that isn't feeding too well is still in the 400 gram range. I feed F/T rats that are a lot bigger than mice! Also once a week.

Perhaps we really don't need to feed that much and as long as they are eating regularly, slow and steady is better than eating a lot and going off feed now and then? I know they always eat mice not fussy like when you give them rats.

No guarantee on anything. If you had his snakes they may have done better, or worse for you and vice versa.

I feed my sub-adult/adult girls every 5 days... small rat. One has doubled in weight, one has only gained 200g- most others are inbetween. My Pinstripe is a HOG!!

My hatchlings never refuse pups. I have a 1.0 normal that is ~100g and a 0.1 butter that is ~200g. They were fed on the same schedule.... go figure. That's the extreme example. Most other 2012 recent hatchling pick-ups are 150- 160g after a few feedings.