Help? BP growth...

So I've had Azareth for almost a year, (I got him December last year) he's a Petsmart BP (He looked so pitiful I couldn't leave him there...) Anyways, he should be about a yearling now since he was three months when I got him, but I don't think he's growing right...
He's not very big, larger than he used to be, but his girth is still pretty little, and his length can't even be two feet yet.
Is this okay? He's not unhealthy looking, I feed him a fuzzy once a week. Is that enough? I don't know if I should up the sizing of his dinner, or maybe feed him more often... Anyways, any advice would be lovely! I'm new here :)

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Even hatchlings out of their egg do not eat fuzzy mice they are started on hopper mice and quickly move to adults, he is obviously being underfed which explains his lack of growth.

Solutions:

Simply feed a prey equal his girth size (largest part of your BP's body) every 5 days and when he starts catching up you can feed once a week.

As an adult if you have a male a prey between 55 to 75 grams weekly will be more than enough.

At a year old he should be eating rodents much larger than a fuzzy, BP's can eat hoppers right out of the egg.

Do you have a scale? you should feed your BP a rodent that is 15% of the BP's body weight. So a 100 gram BP should eat 15 grams of rodent (100 grams x 0.15 = 15 grams)

If you don't have a scale then you should feed your snake a rodent that is as wide as the widest part of the snake.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deborah

Even hatchlings out of their egg do not eat fuzzy mice they are started on hopper mice and quickly move to adults, he is obviously being underfed which explains his lack of growth.

Solutions:

Simply feed a prey equal his girth size (largest part of your BP's body) every 5 days and when he starts catching up you can feed once a week.

As an adult if you have a male a prey between 55 to 75 grams weekly will be more than enough.

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^ This absolutely.

Food should be about 10-15% of the BPs weight, or it should be about as big around as the largest section of the BP's body.

So, for instance, if your BP is 600 grams, you want a rodent that's about 60-80 grams. And if you need a scale, you can find them at Wal-Mart in the kitchen section for about 20 bucks.

Ok, so a lot of people like to throw around the 15% "rule". This is for hatchling/juvenile BPs, not adults. An adult male, even at 1600g, does NOT need a 160-240g rat!! For that matter, neither does an even larger adult female. Small rats (55-75g) weekly, like Deborah posted, are plenty for him to live a healthy life.

You need to feed him prey that is slightly thicker than he is. At a year old he should be easily eating a large mouse, or a weanling rat-maybe even bigger. Length really doesn't matter since BPs are short heavy bodied snakes. Bump up his prey size quite a bit and you'll see him gaining some girth in no time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Annarose15

Ok, so a lot of people like to throw around the 15% "rule". This is for hatchling/juvenile BPs, not adults. An adult male, even at 1600g, does NOT need a 160-240g rat!! For that matter, neither does an even larger adult female. Small rats (55-75g) weekly, like Deborah posted, are plenty for him to live a healthy life.

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So do you just stop once they are able to take on a small rat? (by stop I mean stop increasing rat size)
I thought I had read about adult girls taking a med rat weekly etc.
Just wondering, I didn't realize when the 15% rule didn't apply any more. I don't want to hurt my little one and over feed her when she gets bigger.
She's a piggy and probably would take whatever I gave her, whenever I gave it.

(Sorry for hijack :oops: )