Healthy weight

Annarose,

thank you! Too bad: ) I read a bit about it, now I understand. Maybe one day I'll breed snakes, and then it would turn out.

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Originally Posted by UltraViolet

So now this has me concerned... I've had Pandora for 2 weeks now- she's eaten twice and shed once since I got her. The people I got her from said she was 10 months old and they were feeding her a hopper every 2 weeks. As of Thursday, she is 153 grams and approximately 20 inches long. I'm feeding her weekly, but I'm afraid to give her anything bigger than a hopper because she tends to catch them by the back end and isn't big enough to kill them fast. I'm afraid anything bigger will be able to bite her while being constricted. I really can't handle the idea of f/t or pre killed. So- is she too small for her age? And should I go to bigger mice and not worry so much about her getting bit?

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they catch them any way they like, then quickly kill by constricting and disrupting the blood stream of the rhodent, and then usually swallow it head first once its dead. They go searching for the head after the rhodent is dead; if a BP swallows backwards or folds it the food item is probarbly just too small. I think you just underestimate your BP a bit and could go for larger food, aim for 10-15% of the weight of the snake every 5-7 days. If you want to stick to smaller food, you can feed one prey item, wait until its down, wait another 5-10 minutes, and feed a second one if the snake is still searching and paying attention, and so on, until you reach the right weight. increase the amount of food per feeding, dont increase the frequency of feeding, stick to 5-7 days.


and to both of you..... pictures do more for me than age + weight or weight + length, in a picture you can see if a BP is well-fed or on the thin side so easily. If you can post or link pictures it will be easy.... even for the europeans that dont understand inches, even if you made the mistake of measuring the length of a full shed under the impression that it would make it easier :) (sheds tend to be quite a bit longer by some random amount).

Thanks, Kurtilein, that was exactly the kind of information I was hoping for. I had decided to get her an adult mouse but the pet store was completely out, so I got 2 hoppers. She ate both really fast, and might have gone for a third, but was much more content after two than I've ever seen her. She was also much more coordinated about catching them. I think she's just been really hungry for a long time and now that she's getting more is less frantic about it.

http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/claudia_b/8716712504/


I can't figure out how to post pictures directly using my phone, so here's a link.

I posted pictures of her a while ago, would you be so kind to look at it? I also have them in my gallery. Inches are just not handy, but anything can be multiplied, don't worry about that.