Can you overfeed?

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Originally Posted by Crazy4Herps

In husbandry-related debates such as this, it is useful to consider the animal's habits in the wild. And I assure you, no snake would find food every 2 days in the wild; they are equipped to go over 12mo without food, in case they are forced to.

Overfeeding is unnatural. Their bodies are not meant to handle such great food intakes. Personally, I believe adults should be fed no more than every 7-10 days.

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I agree with this statement 110%. It's not natural for them to eat so much. And you know, most of my BP's are 08s that I bought & started right out of the egg myself. I fed, and still feed them one good sized rodent every 5 days. I took two to a show a few months ago to resell, and I kept getting questioned as to how old they really are, and why were they so huge?! I tell them i swear, I do not beleive in power feeding and will not do it! But apparently, my babies looked borderline powerfed. The ones that consistently feed for me grew FAST. I'm not really sure why they grew so quick, I did not overfeed....Two of them are as large, possibly larger than my 07 YB (not raised by me). You don't have to overfeed them in order for them to grow at a very decent rate. you just need good husbandry techniques, and you have to be good at feeding techniques, especially when switching them over to F/t. I would say 7 out of 10 of my BP's will now eat a f/t rodent that is completely room temperature, not warm, or moving for that matter, at all. Just stick it on the tip of their nose and it's done! My female pastel and one of my males do not even constrict any more! They just open their mouths and start chowing!

I agree with pythonwallace... please do not quote "studies" without providing references!

Contrary to popular belief, pythons are a wild animal. They actually do quite well for themselves in their home town. They eat, grow, reproduce, and yes in some instances get fatter then normal.

That said, many of the larger breeders believe that an overweight female does not breed as good as one that is not overweight... And overweight males are lazy and less interested in breeding (I have seen this one with my own eyes).

I feed one or two properly sized rats a week, even with hatchlings. I have found that over feeding makes them produce poop a lot more often. In other words, if you double their food, it seems to tripple or quadruple the amount of poop they produce.. and when you have 40+ snakes, that just stinks!

Thanks for the useful thread. It saved me from posting a repetitive question.

The missing question in this thread is how large and old the snake being given 5 adult mice actually is. It's the first question I am asking, before answering whether that is too much food for the snake.

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Originally Posted by WingedWolfPsion

The missing question in this thread is how large and old the snake being given 5 adult mice actually is. It's the first question I am asking, before answering whether that is too much food for the snake.

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I believe it was said that she is 3 and 1000 grams..

Depending on the size of those mice I reckon that would be far size meal. At 1000g you can feed a meal of about 100g-150g, which is 10-15% of body weight.

I'd however only feed a meal that size every 10 days or so....:gj:

Over feeding a snake that's already at a perfect weight can cause the snake to be over weight and get stretch marks. This isn't good for the snake, only unless you are trying to make it gain weight if it was under weight. 6 meals within 5 days is definitely not good. You should give the snake time to digest all of the meals before feeding it another. I think you should at least wait a week or two before feeding it again. Feed the snake only once a week, which is highly recommended for snakes since they have slow digestive systems.