Do snakes overeat?

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

How large is your BP??!! My red tail boa who is 5ft+ eats a large rat once every 2 weeks. Unless your BP is a BIG girl, I couldn't imagine a large rat for them.

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He's a big boy, I am estimating his weight because I can't get an exact weight with the way he's acting.

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

How large is your BP??!! My red tail boa who is 5ft+ eats a large rat once every 2 weeks. Unless your BP is a BIG girl, I couldn't imagine a large rat for them.

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Length wise he's approx 4 ft.

Use a pillow case as a snake bag. Place it over the snake and pick it up where the snake ends up inside. Then give the top a few twist and you can easily weigh your snake without getting tagged.

I would if our kitchen scale wasn't MIA. (I have no idea how things like that go missing, but they do). I'll go purchase a new one from Walmart tomorrow!

It's possible that he's less than 3 lbs. He just like to hang out with his head in my hand, and my arm up, so he gets heavy, fast. I have a regular scale that I can use to weigh him in lbs temporarily.

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Originally Posted by MontyAndMelissa

It's possible that he's less than 3 lbs. He just like to hang out with his head in my hand, and my arm up, so he gets heavy, fast. I have a regular scale that I can use to weigh him in lbs temporarily.

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That'll work. Then you can google pounds to grams and convert.

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Originally Posted by Lizardlicks

That'll work. Then you can google pounds to grams and convert.

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1 lb is roughly like 486 grams or something.

If he's 2200 grams, I would guess you need to step up to a small rat or probably 3-4 adult mice. Like I said though, at adult ages, the whole 10-20% weight measurement goes out the window. That applies more to babies as they eat much more often and are growing like weeds. Adults slow down a lot so you need more of a maintenance feeding schedule vs a growing feeding schedule. At Big Cheese Rodents, their adult mice weigh between 19-29 grams while their small rats weigh between 50-89 grams to give you an idea.

Well, I can't weigh him right now anyways. He ate less than 4 hours ago and he does have a habit of regurgitating (hence feeding him in his tank). So what I'll do is tomorrow or the next day I will weigh him, and check to see what 10-15% of his weight is. If the percentage and the "girth" method match in size of prey, I'll stick to that size of prey. If the two methods don't match, I'll pick a prey size between the two. I am also going to put him on a closer schedule if the percentage method points to staying with mice (which I doubt) and check for signs of weight loss.

Well its kind of tricky because if your snake is overweight already, then judging the size of the food by either its girth or weight will give you false readings and you will keep overfeeding it and just increase its girth and weight and keep feeding larger and larger if that makes sense. My advice personally would start with a small rat and then wait till he takes a poop or goes into hunting mode and starts looking around for food. Then you can adjust based on that.