BHB's Feeding Experiment

The dangers of feeding larger prey items for certain snakes are apparent, I don't think any one disagrees with that; I think it more influences people to feed the normal sized food item once a week versus two smaller sized items. Your mileage may vary I'm sure.

I still think the most interesting part though is the vitamin fed snakes. In the comments section he said he fed them Zoo-med multi vitamins. I wish he went into more detail though =(

While I couldn't agree with skiploder more. Knowledge can be a various dangerous thing. Raw facts without a broader understanding can lead to some horrible things. That being said if someone is going to do an experiment I trust Brian who has worked with colubrids on a scale and for a time that not many can match. I would really love to see BHB doing more experiments with more rigorous scientific standards. Lets up the sample size. Track the snakes health as long as possible. Even if at the end of the day we all came away with the understanding that feeding larger meals to corn snakes results in faster growth it does not necessarily translate to other snakes. Regurge or other problems might pop up on another breed. Worse yet we might find that rapid growth effects long term health. Until we fully understand all of these facets its very hard to use this information. I certainly won't be changing my feeding plans anytime soon. I just fed a carpet and a sand boa last night. I am finding that the carpet can handle prey larger respective to the size of its body than my ball python and the sand boa can handle much less. They are literally and figuratively a different animal.

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Originally Posted by MasonC2K

Now this was done on colubrids but I was wondering if pythons and other snake species would work that same way.

What do you guys think?

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Very much works the same way.

If I'm trying to get a bit more growth out of a snake, I'll definitely feed items on the larger end less frequently.

If I'm trying to "slow grow" a species, I don't upsize food as much.

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Originally Posted by el8ch

Yeah, I saw that too Chris... I think the results speak for themselves and would translate similar to ball pythons. I have never fed with vitamins, but aside from that my feeding experience has yielded the same results. Bigger prey items per week resulted in increased wight gain. Standard meals controlled weight and allowed for a steady gain in weight. Smaller items twice a week has only been used here and there on problem feeders in my collection and only in that situation.

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Ok, so you had more issues on feeding normal sized prey twice a week then feeding larger prey once a week?