Can you feed your bp more then once a week?

MY question is can you feed your ball ptython more then once a week.meaning like every other day.or can you feed them every day?it seems like all my bps want to eat all the time like there machines. if i walk by them there ready to strike at any movement.normaly i feed them every weds or fri of every week.but it just seems like they dont eat the way they act. can you just feed them till they dont want to eat?i know in the wild food doesnt come easy but if it did would it be bad if they ate every day or other day?

im new to this game but id say no. maybe just maybe one week out of a year you could feed twice a week givin you allowed a couple of days to digest the first meal.food in the wild comes randomly.my bp is a pig and ready for food anytime.id wait to see what others think.

Hi,

For younger ball pythons you can fed them more than once a week - say every 5 days.

But definately not a great idea to feed them every other day.


dr del

If your balls are that hungry and striking i would ask if your feeding appropriately sized prey?

I feed my younger smaller ones on a 5 days schedule - I adopted a 300 gramer that was definately underfeed and i have been trying to fatten her up. The larger and adult ones are on a 7 day schedule...

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Originally Posted by womsterr

If your balls are that hungry and striking i would ask if your feeding appropriately sized prey?

I feed my younger smaller ones on a 5 days schedule - I adopted a 300 gramer that was definately underfeed and i have been trying to fatten her up. The larger and adult ones are on a 7 day schedule...

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they all eat the right size meals it just seems like they eating machines. i feed on a one a week deal.i was just wondering if it would hurt to feed them more then once a week.guess ill just stick with that.thanks for some input tho.

Mine all eat every 4 or 5 days. I rotate the schedule and feed 4 days and then 5, back to 4 and so on. I have a bunch of happy little sausages.

Regards,

B

Every other day is too often to feed them. Mine are bottomless pits. They even eat in full blue. They would eat anything, any time. I don't let them. I keep reminding myself that they are only snakes. They are not part of this decision-making process.

They are eating every 5 days but they're still small and growing rapidly. They're currently taking 2 rodents at a time because I'm using up my frozen prey that they've outgrown.

Next week when I use up the last of the weaned rats they'll be going on one small rat per meal.

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Originally Posted by Simple Man

Mine all eat every 4 or 5 days. I rotate the schedule and feed 4 days and then 5, back to 4 and so on. I have a bunch of happy little sausages.

Regards,

B

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This is pretty much what I do also :gj:

Pythons are oportunistic feeders. In the wild, they may go weeks with no food. Their systems are designed to eat only periodically. Younger snakes eat more frequently as they are growing and their metabolisms are higher. That is why the general recommendation is every 5 days for babies and moving up to every 7 for adults.

You say your snakes are eating appropriate sized food items, but what does that mean? How big are they and/or how old and just what are they eating? There are many piggy BPs out there, but generally a snake that's snapping at anything that's moving truly is hungry. That doesn't mean you should feed more frequently, but perhaps you should re-evaluate if your prey items are really the appropriate size. Your BP can/should eat a rodent about as big as the thickest point around its girth. They can swallow larger prey than we think they can. Or you can try a 2nd prey item if your rodents are smaller. Another rule of thumb is to feed about 10-15% of your snake's body weight. So if your BP is 1000 grams, he should be eating a 100 gram rat or two 50-55 gram rats/mice approximately. .....But only once every 7 days or so..... ;)

I feed some snakes 2 times a week and others weekly.
I've found feeding smaller prey items multiple times a week keeps them on feed better than feeding larger meals once a week.
Especially with the larger females :)

I would advise double checking prey size as well.

I have 16 balls, ranging from a mere 160 grams up to 3000 grams, and mine eat every 7 days like clockwork. They know when feeding day is, because they'll come out the day before and give me the pitiful starving snake look, to make sure I don't forget to feed.

However, none of mine randomly strike at movement or heat signatures even on feeding day. The rule I follow is a sort of modified 15% rule.

My babies get one adult mouse or rat pup weekly, roughly 30-40 grams in weight, right up until the snake hits 250-300 grams. Sometimes one will get two as they reach the heavier end of that scale. From roughly 300-800 grams they get a weaned rat weekly, roughly 45-70 grams in weight. Over 800 grams of snake, they get a small rat weekly to every 14 days, roughly 60-100 grams in weight. Nobody gets bigger than a small. Not even my biggest females.

During the breeding season, males tend to get one size smaller than usual to keep them eating longer. Females building to lay eggs are offered 2 standard prey items, sometimes they take two, sometimes not.

If the prey size is correct, you might try offering two items for one feeding, and see if that seems to calm everyone down. If so, you could alternate by feeding two items one week and a single item the next.

Gale

My first ball python was quite skinny, so I put him on a 4 day feeding schedule for about 2 months, he is now on a regular 7 day feeding schedule with the rest of them. I now feed 3/4 snakes once every 7 days (weaned rats....all between 300-400 grams) and my little female is on a once every 4-5 days feeding schedule (adult mice, she's only about 110-120 grams). Feeding every other day is way too often and doesn't give them any time to digest what they ate. Like others have mentioned, I'd check your prey size...they shouldn't be hungry enough to eat every other day. Mine eat their weaned rats and then I don't see them for 2 or 3 days because they are so stuffed lol.

THANKS GUYS.i always feed them a rat the size of the mid section and sometimes i feed them 2 rats per feeding.i only have one that strikes but hes been like that since i got him from the breeder he calmed down alittle but strikes at me if im clean his tank. the others just are very alert and they see movement they act like they seen food but realize its just me.i never been bitten by any of them (KNOCK ON WOOD) but just wondering if you could feed more then normal.i like to ask alot of questions and im sure i come off as i dont know anything about snakes but i know alittle about alot and still learning.im new to the whole breedind thing and all so i jjust ask dumb questions that make me look like i dumb.but how do you learn if you dont ask questions.i thank all you guys that respond to any of my post.

It sounds like from your post you are feeding heavy, it also sounds like they are acting like they are being lightly fed. It is always hard to offer opinions when the information is contradicting. They are feeding so I assume the husbandry is fine. So my guess and it is a guess that the rats you are providing are a bit smaller than you think.?? Have you weighed you snakes and your prey items? Personally I know what all of mine weigh give or take (monthly weights are taken and recorded) and I weigh all the rats I get and separate them according to weight. (frozen if you didn't figure that out yet...) I don't need to guess I just grab the right ones and feed them.

I personally don't stick to a ridged schedule either. I tend to feed every seven days the sub adults get 10% body mass but adults get a bit less like 5-7% but get every week rather than a wider spaced schedule, it is about the same amount of food but it is a, easier for me to feed everyone at once. b, I believe that it is better for the digestion of adults to have a smaller meal more frequently than large meals spaced farther apart. I think I read a study on that ages ago but I can't remember exactly so don't quote me on that one. I do it because it seems to make sense to me. I am not a breeder and like to handle my animals so big meals need more digestion time than smaller so it means a longer wait.

OK, a funny feeding story.

At one time I had a mouse colony going tofeed my snakes. Way back ages ago when there were only a couple of morphs and nobody could afford them.

As mouse colonies often do, I hit a period where there was an unusually high number of pinkies and fuzzies. Way too many to grow out, and I didn't have anything amongst my reptiles which was eating pinkies and fuzzies.

Ever have on of those 3am "one beer too many" bright ideas? One of those "what if?" moments? I did.

I went through the mouse colony and thinned out the pinkies and fuzzies, gathering them all into a bowl. I took the bowl and presented it to my 4 1/2 foot long BP, Kaa.

Kaa looked at that bowl of writhing mice, flicked his tongue over it a couple of times here and there, then began eating the pinkies and fuzzies like they were popcorn. He didn't strike or try to constrict, he merely selected a mouse, picked it up and swallowed it, then selected it another one.

In my beer induced slightly hazy euphoria that was one of the most wonderful things I had ever seen. I pulled up a chair and watched that python eat the baby mice one by one.

It still makes me laugh when I think about it. Snakes will do some majorly unexpected things.

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Originally Posted by Redneck_Crow

OK, a funny feeding story.

At one time I had a mouse colony going tofeed my snakes. Way back ages ago when there were only a couple of morphs and nobody could afford them.

As mouse colonies often do, I hit a period where there was an unusually high number of pinkies and fuzzies. Way too many to grow out, and I didn't have anything amongst my reptiles which was eating pinkies and fuzzies.

Ever have on of those 3am "one beer too many" bright ideas? One of those "what if?" moments? I did.

I went through the mouse colony and thinned out the pinkies and fuzzies, gathering them all into a bowl. I took the bowl and presented it to my 4 1/2 foot long BP, Kaa.

Kaa looked at that bowl of writhing mice, flicked his tongue over it a couple of times here and there, then began eating the pinkies and fuzzies like they were popcorn. He didn't strike or try to constrict, he merely selected a mouse, picked it up and swallowed it, then selected it another one.

In my beer induced slightly hazy euphoria that was one of the most wonderful things I had ever seen. I pulled up a chair and watched that python eat the baby mice one by one.

It still makes me laugh when I think about it. Snakes will do some majorly unexpected things.

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:8::rofl::rofl::rofl: That is one of the funniest stories I've read!!

Also, I agree with kitedemon - I would go by weight. Do you have a gram scale? If so, weigh your snake and then offer as many rats/mice as equal about 15% of his weight. You could do this every 5-6 days rather than every 7 for a month or two to see if that helps and then slowly back him off to every 7 - or keep feeding on a looser schedule. Ella eats anywhere from every 6 to 9 days depending on her mood. It works well for us.

And if you haven't seen it yet, check out this thread. http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...38#post1571738. There are other reasons for a BP to be snappy....

And no worries - no question is too 'dumb'. I didn't think you didn't know anything. Sometimes, basic issues can be totally confusing!

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Originally Posted by Redneck_Crow

OK, a funny feeding story.

At one time I had a mouse colony going tofeed my snakes. Way back ages ago when there were only a couple of morphs and nobody could afford them.

As mouse colonies often do, I hit a period where there was an unusually high number of pinkies and fuzzies. Way too many to grow out, and I didn't have anything amongst my reptiles which was eating pinkies and fuzzies.

Ever have on of those 3am "one beer too many" bright ideas? One of those "what if?" moments? I did.

I went through the mouse colony and thinned out the pinkies and fuzzies, gathering them all into a bowl. I took the bowl and presented it to my 4 1/2 foot long BP, Kaa.

Kaa looked at that bowl of writhing mice, flicked his tongue over it a couple of times here and there, then began eating the pinkies and fuzzies like they were popcorn. He didn't strike or try to constrict, he merely selected a mouse, picked it up and swallowed it, then selected it another one.

In my beer induced slightly hazy euphoria that was one of the most wonderful things I had ever seen. I pulled up a chair and watched that python eat the baby mice one by one.

It still makes me laugh when I think about it. Snakes will do some majorly unexpected things.

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:rofl:

I did that once too! I picked up a couple ASF and on the way home one of them had 16 babies. We didn't have the room at the time to raise the babies, so I took the ball of ASF pinks and offered them to one of our corns. Problem solved, he ate every last one.

Is there realy a science to feeding ball pythons?i always thought one nice size mouse,rat would be fine once a week.10-15% of body weight should be fed now.i have books on ball pythons and never read that befor.hmmm see i learned something new.you guys rock!!!ill start trying that with some of my females they eat and gain weight but it doesnt look like they are thick/fat enough maybe if i try that % scale.they thicken up a bit.thanks again guys..

"Kaa looked at that bowl of writhing mice, flicked his tongue over it a couple of times here and there, then began eating the pinkies and fuzzies like they were popcorn. He didn't strike or try to constrict, he merely selected a mouse, picked it up and swallowed it, then selected it another one.

In my beer induced slightly hazy euphoria that was one of the most wonderful things I had ever seen. I pulled up a chair and watched that python eat the baby mice one by one. "


hahahahahaha that is tooo funny!!!!!
i wouldve probably reacted the same way.
you two should have a movie night!
:snake: + :couch: = :partyon:

you should be careful not to over feed but every 5 days isn't bad. i just got a female spider and she ate a huge rat on monday then i gave her a smaller rat on saturday.. now ill give her 7 days before i feed her again.. :snake:

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Originally Posted by FINGAZZ

Is there realy a science to feeding ball pythons?i always thought one nice size mouse,rat would be fine once a week.10-15% of body weight should be fed now.i have books on ball pythons and never read that befor.hmmm see i learned something new.you guys rock!!!ill start trying that with some of my females they eat and gain weight but it doesnt look like they are thick/fat enough maybe if i try that % scale.they thicken up a bit.thanks again guys..

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No, there really isn't an exact science to feeding. We do our best to mimic nature, but we can't ever duplicate it 100%. 10-15% of body weight is approximately the size prey a BP would hunt in the wild. But this is why offering 2 prey items to equal that percentage is appropriate - if a BP finds a little mouse in the wild, he's gonna take it. But then he's gonna keep hunting til he's full - probably 1 or 2 more mice will do it til the next week or so. Incidentally, I'm not necessarily recommending feeding multiple prey items - just pointing out how it can work out sometimes.

Anyhow, that may very well help your kids to add a few grams. You can feed that percentage every 5 days or so if they have good appetites and a little less often if you have picky eaters.

Side Note: Ella ate 2 jumbo mice last night. She's about 1100 grams and the mice were 50-55 grams each. The last time she ate was 2 weeks ago. She'd been on a hunger strike from Jan-March and I'd had to restart her on live as she was still refusing f/t. 2 weeks ago, she ate 3 small live mice which only weighed in at about 20 grams each. Before that, she's taken a few live mice through April coming off her strike. So all in all, they'll eat what's appropriate. ;)

I have one guy that never seems satiated too. He tracks like crazy but doesn't strike except on feeding day. We offered a larger prey size and it didn't help, so we offered several slightly smaller items (still the width of his largest diameter) back to back in the same night and that seems to work for him. He's just a PIG. Our other snake never seems as ravenous as this one, so I wonder if some snakes are just genetically determined to be ravenous feeders.

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Originally Posted by Evenstar

No, there really isn't an exact science to feeding. We do our best to mimic nature, but we can't ever duplicate it 100%. 10-15% of body weight is approximately the size prey a BP would hunt in the wild. But this is why offering 2 prey items to equal that percentage is appropriate - if a BP finds a little mouse in the wild, he's gonna take it. But then he's gonna keep hunting til he's full - probably 1 or 2 more mice will do it til the next week or so. Incidentally, I'm not necessarily recommending feeding multiple prey items - just pointing out how it can work out sometimes.

Anyhow, that may very well help your kids to add a few grams. You can feed that percentage every 5 days or so if they have good appetites and a little less often if you have picky eaters.

Side Note: Ella ate 2 jumbo mice last night. She's about 1100 grams and the mice were 50-55 grams each. The last time she ate was 2 weeks ago. She'd been on a hunger strike from Jan-March and I'd had to restart her on live as she was still refusing f/t. 2 weeks ago, she ate 3 small live mice which only weighed in at about 20 grams each. Before that, she's taken a few live mice through April coming off her strike. So all in all, they'll eat what's appropriate. ;)

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THANKS!! that makes sence now.i noticed when i feed a big rat to them they eat it and then go right to there hide stuffed i guess.some just still want more.so ill get to weighing them and there food weekly.thanks again.

Hey there, any updates? How are things going?

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Originally Posted by Evenstar

Hey there, any updates? How are things going?

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not realy an update.but i decided to just feed evey week like i have been doing. there geting bigger and gaining weight so im doing things right.but i will start doin the %weight ratio thing next month. that give me more time to get the feeding list in order and a new one made up.

I would not feed every other day, however when ball pythons are young they can generally eat every 5-7 days. Make sure your temps are right as the warmer it is, the faster the food will digest. If you really want to feed mor ethan once a week, shoot for every 5 days - granted your BP actually takes a meal within that time span. If it becomes picky, hold back.

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Originally Posted by FINGAZZ

not realy an update.but i decided to just feed evey week like i have been doing. there geting bigger and gaining weight so im doing things right.but i will start doin the %weight ratio thing next month. that give me more time to get the feeding list in order and a new one made up.

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Good for you! Just remember to be a bit flexible with your schedule and you'll do fine - and so will they! ;)

My ball python tinkerbell is a pig... She eats 3 small/medium rats every sunday but i love my fatty girl and she seems rather fat and happy.