Is it time for bigger food

Two weeks ago i noticed some new feeding related behavior in Irwin, and more so this week. 2 weeks ago, about 14 days after his last meal and about 4 or 5 days after he pooped, i noticed that he was, what appeared to be, hungry. He came out to meet me when i checked on him - he never does that unless its feeding day and he can smell the rat. I easily booped him out of it and we had a very nice play-date but the next day i went out and got the biggest small rat i could find. He ate it as quickly or quicker than any meal he's ever had.
Fast forward to yesterday - again with the hunger routine - i feed him again today and he eats it even faster, and this time, he stayed in feeding mode after he was done! Now i know that this is not uncommon among snakes, but it has never happened with Irwin before. Usually after he's done he is just sleepy and content and curls up in his warm hide for a day, but today even a half hour after he'd finished, not only was he still roaming his cage, but when i walked by he tracked me, i mean really tracked me - not just coming out to say "hi" like before.
So is he ready for medium rats? or (and this is just a theory) is he finally getting comfortable enough around me to act like a normal snake? As of this week i've had him for 7 months, ( he is exactly 2 years and 4 months old) and although i haven't noted any other significant behavior changes, it occurs to me that maybe he's finally overcome some level of anxiety about his safety/security here and no longer feels the need to hide after he eats???
Now i like to feed more conservatively anyway, and it has been suggested to me and i am inclined to believe that a hungry boa is happier and more fun than a stuffed one, but if i am going to be spacing out his meals, i would at least like them to be satisfactory in size.
Unfortunately i can not tell you how heavy he is, only that is is over 3'8" (i measured him a month ago) but i have some screen grabs of today's feeding and the one 2 weeks ago for reference.


Today: (he has never come straight out like that before)
https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...52094692_o.jpg

Today: rat's midsection compared to his
https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...80&oe=586DAF3F


2 weeks ago: its blurry, but you get a pretty good idea of the size.
https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net...17&oe=58A7836A

i wish i had good shots of the lumps they left, but not only was he out of frame, but i can tell you they were hardly noticeable.

What do y'all think??

If he is over 2 years old, I would say yes bump him to mediums. Especially since you said, the smalls barely leave a lump. I feed my sunglow who is about 5' and almost 3 years old mediums and smalls. I just kind of vary it up with each feeding. Same goes for my large girl who is 6-7'. She gets rabbits some weeks and large rats others. Try a small medium and see how big of lump it leaves. it shouldn't look like a football but it should be noticeable.

Also all my snakes even after eating are still alert and would gladly take seconds or thirds. There is nothing wrong with them still being a little hungry after eating. They aren't pythons so you don't want to stuff them but also you don't want to starve them but then again, it would pretty hard to starve a boa as they can go a LONG time without food and no ill effects.

Also my sunglow sometimes gets 2 smalls or 1 medium and 1 small depending if my BP decides she isn't hungry. So nothing wrong with varying their food. Some feedings give them a extra healthy portion, other feedings, give them a smaller portion.

Also boas are always hungry so them tracking you is pretty normal. Whenever I open either of my gals' cages, they perk up and zoom up to check me out. When they smell its just me and no food, they usually lay down or keep coming and hang their head out the front door of the cage.

He's a little small for mediums imo. I don't start feeding mediums until they're about 5', he should be eating meals that leave no bulge. Honestly, from the pictures you posted, smalls look plenty large enough. If that was the smallest small you could find, just start feeding large small rats.

My ghost girl is about 3.5'-4' and I'm feeding her weaned rats, she isn't even on smalls yet. I want her to put on a bit more size.

You can try a medium, but if he isn't even 4' it's probably going to be too much. If it is a large meal, give him an extra week or two before you offer another meal. (Edit to add, also buy the small mediums. I'm not sure where you buy your food from but I know Layne Labs splits their mediums into 2 sizes. They may still be a bit large, but more likely to be appropriately-sized than a normal medium. If you get your rodents from a pet store, just look on their site to see the weight range and make sure you buy a rat within that range.)

Well different places size their stuff different. Where I buy my rats, the small F/T rats are about 3". The small mediums are about 4". If you are buying locally, best bet is just eyeball the thickness of your snake at its widest point and buy something a little thicker than that. BCI can handle decent sized meals so I wouldn't worry about regurgitation. I've fed my 5' sunglow gal 2 medium rats back to back and she was fine. She definitely had a lump lol. I've also fed my big girl rabbits that were probably too big for her but she got them down and was fine. I wouldn't make it a habit of feeding too large all the time though. That's why I said vary the size. A medium one feeding, then a small next feeding or 2, then a medium etc

And it is true that a hungry boa is more active than a full one which again is why I say feed different sizes. The longer you have the snake, you will learn to read them and know when they are hungry or I should say when they need food as a healthy boa is always hungry.

Bottomline, your boa but if it was me, I would try the next size up or at least have a look at it. I always hated when my snakes hit the halfway point in food where they are a little too small for the next big step but too large for the step they are on now. Luckily for me, the place I go, I pretty much have free run of their freezer so I can pick out exactly what size I need for those inbetween times. And like Cloud said, try a large small or small medium assuming your rat supplier breaks it down into those or just ask to look through their bags of frozen and pick the one you like.

Yeah it's not so much a worry of regurgitation for me, but of overfeeding. A snake being fed on a regular schedule should be fed smaller meals less often. If I feed something a bit too big I space it out. For babies I just add a week or two, for adults I double the time in between meals and for both I'll feed a smaller meal the next time.

If they're halfway between sizes I really don't worry about it. They'll grow just fine on the smaller meals. If they're at the halfway point it doesn't take them long at all to make the jump (assuming they're juveniles and not adults). With my boa constrictors I 100% do not double up feeding, even when the weight of the combined prey items are less than the weight of the single prey item the next size up it causes rapid growth in weight and length. Steady growth is best.

The pet store I used to buy from would weigh my feeders if I asked because sometimes their sizings are way off from the norm. So see if they'll do that, then aim for rats in the small medium size range. If it leaves a large bulge I'd go a size down. At 2 years I personally would prefer to not see a bulge at all though, as adults you shouldn't be able to tell they've just eaten. This is assuming you're feeding them regularly on a 4-6 week schedule, or at least 3-4 weeks for a dwarf. If you're only feeding large meals a few times a year spaced out then that's fine, but snakes fed regularly benefit from less food at one time.


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That feeder looks to be the perfect size. You don't want feeders leaving big lumps in boas. Boas and pythons can stay in 'food mode' for up to an hour after feeding (which is one of the reasons feeding in a separate container is not recommended).
He looks like he has a nice solid square shape, that is ideal. :)

I have to disagree that a prey item leaving a lump of some size in the animal is a bad thing. I will admit most of my snake experience is pythons, but I also keep a number of colubrids and with them you don't want large lumps after a feeding. The moto I go by with them and now my boas is for the prey item to leave a noticeable but not overly large lump. In my opinion if you're feeding a prey item that doesn't leave a lump at all then it's almost like underfeeding. Now there are exceptions to this rule, such as males that aren't being bred or fat snakes, but for the most part the prey item should leave a bit of a lump in the animal. This is again one of those topics that's going to be colored by personal opinions, and everyone has one, in the end if you feel like you want to move him up to mediums do it. Feed him mediums a couple times see how he reacts and go from there. My new hypo salmon boy is about 5ish foot long and is eating FT large rats. They aren't huge larges, but they are good sized and the lump they leave is just barely noticeable so if you ask me that's fine.

Like a couple others have said, snakes are always hungry and will just keep eating if given the chance. They are opportunistic ambush predators and they go through long periods in the wild where they don't eat. believe me when I say that there are some snakes, like the giant pythons that are bottomless pits where food just disappears.

Again though like I said this is a lot of opinion as long as your snake is happy and healthy that's all that really matters. And I'm sure everyone on here will agree with me on that :) on a side not, beautiful boy you have there.

It's interesting, because I had always heard about the snake staying in feed mode but I've never actually witnessed it myself – it was actually kind of exciting to see him so alert and on the prowl. I think I may investigate some mediums though they are in opaque bags so I have to really just feel them, I think the smallest of the mediums might be a good option.

After everything I've read on obesity and fatty liver disease I'll have to disagree as well. Snakes need far less than what you think to survive, or even breed.

When eating regularly it really is important to lower the prey size. If you're only feeding them a few times a year, larger prey items can work, but honestly it's healthier to feed smaller meals "more" often (less often than most people do but more often than when being fed larger meals).

It is way too easy to overfeed a snake at the cost of its life. Not many people like to talk about it out in the open but obesity is a really common killer in captive reptiles.

Even snakes fed conservatively have succumbed to it, so that just goes to show how little they need.

They can be asymptomatic into adulthood before it kills them, but it will always cut their life drastically short.

I also want to add a LOT of instances of fatty liver disease I've found have occurred during the breeding season. Same story: female is pumped up for breeding, "mysteriously" dies. Oftentimes a necropsy shows the ova are being reabsorbed. Overfeeding female boas leads to complications and slugging out.


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hmmm, well i'm not looking to bump up the size jsut for sake of over feeding, but let me ask you, what do you think accounts for the sudden emergence of the "feed-mode" behavior - do you thnkk maybe the smalls were a little big for him, and now he has grown into him and is, for the first time, not over-stuffed after a small.