Overweight Ball Python?

I am a little concerned my ball python might be overweight - he is a male, 5 years old, just over 4 ft long, and around 1100g. He eats one medium rat, which is about the size of his body at the girthiest part, every 1.5-2 weeks.

https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...g_7768-min.jpg
https://ball-pythons.net/gallery/fil...g_7750-min.jpg

nah, but he's a good size, tho! honestly, he looks great!!! :gj:

At that size and age I'd say he's just very well fed, but not unhealthy in weight.

It’s hard to tell from the pictures. But it does look like you can still see his backbone a bit, which is good. When he coils into a tighter coil, you will see folds in the skin but the folds shouldn’t be filled out like rolls of fat. In the top picture it looks like that’s happening a bit near his tail (they put on weight at the back first), sort of like he has little love handles, so maybe he could stand to lose a bit unless maybe he’s about to take a big dump soon.

For an adult male who isn’t even breeding, he doesn’t need to eat that often, although if he goes on fasts sometimes that might balance things out. The feeding schedule you describe sounds more like what’s recommended for growing juveniles, not adults. It’s also not a bad thing if he has time to get hungry and engage in a lot more activity/hunting behavior in between feedings; exercise is a good thing.

I would say slightly overweight but not obese.

If you look about 1/3 down his body, you can see that there’s a depression where his spine is... indicating an accumulation of fat around the spine (causing the spine to appear to be in a crater of sorts).

Also, notice the beginnings of fat rolls near the tail.

Otherwise he seems pretty healthy. Like others mentioned, you might stand to reduce feeding to once every 2 weeks, maybe even 3 depending on his habits.


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Yeah he hasn’t pooped since his last meal and he does go on fasts sometimes for maybe around a month or so every now and then but I will definitely start offering less often - thank you!

I think he could switch from medium to small rats every 10-14 days at that age and size.