Re: What skip said is right
Quote:
Originally Posted by
nightrainfalls
Also, if your snake is growing and shedding, it is getting enough food. A lot of people try to benchmark thier snakes. They say it should be so big after so many months. You should not do this. Three snakes fed the exact same diet will grow at three different rates. I weigh my actively growing snakes every few weeks and as long as weight is increasing and I am seeing regular sheds, all is good. I usually feed less than 10 percent. Once the snake has reached near maximum size, I don't even feed that much. Unless you have an extremely active Colubrid, it just is not needed.
David
David is correct, the 10 to 15% "rule" applies to adult males if you feed every two weeks.
The 15 to 20% "rule" applies to breeding females if you feed every two weeks.
Those are averages and they also incorrectly model that the snake eats on a regular schedule all year long.
Captive snakes tend to be more sedentary to boot. Ball pythons have to expend various amounts of energy to seek mates, eat and den in the wild. These same expenditures do not apply to the great tupperware savannas of suburbia.
What does all this gibberish mean? Captive snakes are being overfed a diet of captive bred rodents that have a differing caloric composition than their wild prey models.
It's funny that many people who espouse feeding their domesticated dogs "prey model" diets at great expense and inconvenience, won't extend that same consideration to their un-domesticated captive reptiles.
If you know what species eat what, and if you know what ailments strike snakes fed too much of the wrong things, then you have enough information at hand to find enough studies to show the link between overfeeding, improper diets and life threatening disease in snakes.
