weight gain question

Just curious if anyone keeps track of the weight of their BP from immediately before feeding them to right after their next *ahem* bowl movement. I'm wondering how much of their intake gets converted to actual body mass. Every time I see a stool, it always seems so small compared to what went in... thoughts? observations? actual numbers would be awesome...

I know a lot of people do this, but I personally don't. I just try to weigh them after a bowl movement or on "empty".

There should always be less poo coming out than food going in, the idea is that they are absorbing the food so they can grow.

Mispost

I'm am going through this exercise at the moment with my new baby pied female.

I weigh all her prey before feeding and record it on Degei. The plan is to monitor how much she eats over say the next year and once she hits about 1000g to weigh her after her poo. From there I can calculate what % of prey has been absorbed....

To be totally exact I would need to weigh the poo and the pee each time, but I don't particularly want to do that:rofl:

yeah, no need to be THAT exact...

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Originally Posted by Bundu Boy

I'm am going through this exercise at the moment with my new baby pied female.

I weigh all her prey before feeding and record it on Degei. The plan is to monitor how much she eats over say the next year and once she hits about 1000g to weigh her after her poo. From there I can calculate what % of prey has been absorbed....

To be totally exact I would need to weigh the poo and the pee each time, but I don't particularly want to do that:rofl:

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hmm well i can tell you that my 09 spider has gone from 120g to 210 in 2 months.
i feed him a mouse around 25g every 4-7 days.

dont know if that helps but hope it did a little!

I weigh every other month

IT seems like snakes retain about 25% of the weight of the food items it's fed.

They keep 10% of the food they eat as permenant w8. At leant that's what my science book says:P

Well I guess I'll do the math after 36 hours. Then after pooping.
Weight now are:
Normal: 134 grams, feeders totalling 23 grams
Pastel: 104 grams, feeders totalling 17 grams
Spider: 109 grams, feeder totalling 16 grams (might add to this)

Spider just pooped so weight is prob in the high 90's or low 100's but I will go with 109 and the pastel hasn't pooped yet so will keep the 104 as well.

Thursday afternoon I will weigh again when I clean the cages.
Then by the weekend they all should have pooped so another weight will be taken.
Final percents will be done then.

Edit:
Spider ate 21 grams

New weigh in's will be tom night. Moving the Spider into her new 16 qt setup and finally out of quarantine. Plus she pooped and need to change her cage and the Pastel made a mess of blood so need to change his too.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maurice Tebele

They keep 10% of the food they eat as permenant w8. At leant that's what my science book says:P

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I've heard that, too, but I'm certain it's different for different physiologies, especially somethings as different as warm vs. cold blooded. I imagine a growing snake could convert much more to weight gain than a similar sized frenetic lil' mammal.

24 hours after feeding:
Normal: 158 grams, weight gain: 24 grams, percent gain from food: 100%
Pastel: 112 grams, weight gain: 8 grams, percent gain from food: 44.4%
Spider: 120 grams, weight gain: 11 grams (but pooped before feeding so prob around like 15+ grams), percent gain from food: 52.4% (prob upwards of 70%)

Conclusion thus far is that I need to feed my pastel more. haha. Pastel and Normal will be on 25 gram mice next week and the Spider is having her last week of live, might even try to feed her f/t though.

Next weigh in is after they poo

I would be interested in what percentage water weight feeder rodents are.

Water is not being converted into body mass, though it would contribute to weight until expelled or evaporated (Do Snakes sweat?)

I don't know what the percentage is for rodents but they say a human is 60% - 75% water by weight depending on the individual (percentage decreases with age and physical factors)

So let's just say 60% water weight for the rodent as an EXAMPLE

A 100g rodent would then actually on be 40g weight not water
Then you would have to figure how much of that 40g is passed as waste,
how much is converted to energy and burned, and how much is converted to body mass (Tissue, bone, fat, ect.)

So 10% is probably a pretty good estimate without actually doing the science

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Maurice Tebele

They keep 10% of the food they eat as permenant w8. At leant that's what my science book says:P

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I would be interested in seeing a scientific break down of that supported with good documentation :)
Too much work for me...I think I will just enjoy my snakes :)

Update:
Normal and Spider peed so I decided to weigh them

48 hours before feeding
Normal: 148
Spider: 115
Pastel: 113

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JAMills

I would be interested in what percentage water weight feeder rodents are.

Water is not being converted into body mass, though it would contribute to weight until expelled or evaporated (Do Snakes sweat?)

I don't know what the percentage is for rodents but they say a human is 60% - 75% water by weight depending on the individual (percentage decreases with age and physical factors)

So let's just say 60% water weight for the rodent as an EXAMPLE

A 100g rodent would then actually on be 40g weight not water
Then you would have to figure how much of that 40g is passed as waste,
how much is converted to energy and burned, and how much is converted to body mass (Tissue, bone, fat, ect.)

So 10% is probably a pretty good estimate without actually doing the science


I would be interested in seeing a scientific break down of that supported with good documentation :)
Too much work for me...I think I will just enjoy my snakes :)

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not to be picky, but much of a snake's body mass is water as well, so a significant amount of their mass increase would come from the water they take in. I hadn't really thought about that much, but it's interesting.

Lots of biology texts quote the 10% thing, but it's very generalized.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JAMills

Water is not being converted into body mass, though it would contribute to weight until expelled or evaporated (Do Snakes sweat?)

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by WesleyTF

not to be picky, but much of a snake's body mass is water as well, so a significant amount of their mass increase would come from the water they take in. I hadn't really thought about that much, but it's interesting.

Lots of biology texts quote the 10% thing, but it's very generalized.

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Your not being picky :gj:
I agree with what you said
Yes the water would contribute to the weight gain but not all the water in the prey item will be retained in the animal