his weight ok i'm concernedIs

I finally got an accurate weight on nugget and at 2 days shy of 8 mos he is only 255 grams is this ok. I was hoping he would be bigger. He eats a ft rat pup every 6 days. and is always hungry. Can i feed him more often or is he just a small guy. I don't want a fat snake, just a healthy one, even if he is a little smaller. Any suggestions or comments will be appreciated. He is very active and loves to climb and explore.

I will say it again people put to much importance in numbers, the most important thing is, the animal being healthy and well proportionate. :gj:

If the animal looks good I would not worry about the weight or compare weight with other keepers, everyone feeds differently, every snake grows at it's on rate, so there is a lot of variability (also depends how fast or how big the snake got started out of the egg)

Sure you can feed more but it's not necessary snakes do fine with 1 prey item a week (that is more than they would ever get in the wild)

I'm not an expert, but neither am I an idiot. But, as long as you can't see the spine of your snake sticking out, he's fine. As for your snake "always being hungry", how are you able to tell? If he is poking his head out of the hide, that doesn't necessarily mean that he is hungry, he is just checking things out. Although, if you offered him some food, he would probably take it. Just because they're opportunists. Just do what you're doing and he'll grow at a nice rate. Increasing the amount of food you're giving him would probably be power feeding and he'll grow too fast.

If you want to see what an underweight ball python really looks like, just Google it.

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Originally Posted by Deborah

I will say it again people put to much importance in numbers, the most important thing is, the animal being healthy and well proportionate. :gj:

If the animal looks good I would not worry about the weight or compare weight with other keepers, everyone feeds differently, every snake grows at it's on rate, so there is a lot of variability (also depends how fast or how big the snake got started out of the egg)

Sure you can feed more but it's not necessary snakes do fine with 1 prey item a week (that is more than they would ever get in the wild)

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Also glad to see this. I got mine from a chain store (I know, I know!) and they had him on food that was way too small. At 6-7 months, he's only 178 grams. But he seems healthy, no visible physical issues, and I've moved him up to more reasonable food (using the middle of his body sizing method), so I'm confident he'll start growing appropriately. Still, good to see someone else say it.

If you got a scale, the general "rule" is 10-15% of the snakes weight as food. And a lot of people say feed every 3-4 days until they reach 500g. Then the 10-15% and every 3-4 days goes out the window. Then they just go on a maintenance diet of something like a small rat once a week or even once every 2 weeks. My baby pied girl was 102g when I got her back in November and now at last weigh in about a week ago, she was up to 420g and went from about 18" or so to now almost 3ft. I fed her every 3-4 days but now I have backed her off to a weaned rat every week. She acted really hungry all the time when she was a baby but now she is a lot more mellow and pokes her head when she smells a rat but doesn't go into cobra mode where she would stand up and get rdy to strike the screen top as I took it off. But like Deborah said, you need to physically assess the animal too and make judgements on more food or less food. But imo 1 rat pup every 6 days for a 255g snake seems kind of small.