Healthy weight

Dear everyone,

I bought my ball python about a month ago. When I got her, she was 111grams. I measured her today, she came up to 173grams. The breeder told me that she was born in October, 2012, so she is about 6-7 months old. Is that underweight for her age? I am not planning to breed her or anything, she is a pet, but I'd like her to grow nicely and be healthy. She was eating fuzzies when I got her, but that was too small so I got her 20-30gr full-grown mice.

Totally different question: the breeder also said, that she was born from a clutch of a wildcolor x morph ( which he couldn't tell...). Is there any way to find that out? I was thinking and I think the best way is to get her a 100% wildcolor male, and then see what's in the clutch, right? I know it is silly, I am just interested, because she is het for something.

Thank you all in advance,
M.

It sounds like she might be a little underweight. Can you show us a picture? That will help. I'm glad you switched her to full size mice because fuzzy mice are WAY too small.

As for her morph, a picture would be best to determine what she is. By wildcolor do you mean wildcaught? Normal? And if the breeder doesn't know what morph was the father, I'm going to say she's probably just a normal with no hets. Again, a picture would be helpful.

Id be willing to say she is fine and healthy. Most of us feed way more than what is necessary. A picture though would be able to get a better response.

Hey everyone,

thank you for the answers! I uploaded two pictures in my gallery, not the best ones, but you get the idea.

http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/show...mageuser=33729
http://ball-pythons.net/gallery/show...mageuser=33729

She is eating well, even though she is a bit picky at the beginning. She sniffs all around a lot before she gets the prey, and she almost never strikes, just eats it like a princess. I feed her frozen-thawed, but it's working so I am happy.

Oh, and about the morph:
By wildcolor I mean captive bread animal with normal color. So yeah, normal.
But the breeder said, she comes from a clutch where the mother was also a normal, and the father was a morph. He couldn't tell which morph, which is weird, but it seemed that he didn't really value the non-morph snakes, which was said. So I guess I can only find that out If I breed her to a 100% normal male.

about the morph:

if its a dominant or codominant morph, you should be able to identify it by just inspecting the snake you have. And i dont see a morph here.

if the snake is heterozygous for some recessive morph, if you breed it to a normal you will only get normals and dont learn anything. You would need to know what specific morph it is het for and then breed it to the specific morph. or you would need to try each one individually, like: breed to albino to see if its maybe het albino, breed to ghost to see if its maybe het ghost, and so on with clown, axanthic, G-stripe, pied, caramel, ... .. .

you could try to get pictures of the parent snakes, especially the father. that will help more than actually breeding it. it looks quite normal to me, so if you breed it to a normal chances are you will just get 100% normals. i would just consider your female a normal, and then just breed multi-gene males to it. proving it out with a normal to most likely get a clutch of normals just doesnt seem to be worth it.


most likely scenario: the guy bred some codominant morph or combo to the female, like pewter male or yellowbelly male or whatever, and depending on the pairing and your luck you get something like 50% morph 50% normal. Or 25% normals and 75% with one or two genes. And yes, breeders just sort these out and sell them as normals and dont pay too much attention.

Thank you for the detailed answer! I know she is normal!

But I am just so disappointed that the guy just simply couldn't tell anything about the father. I asked the breeder already, he didn't remember. Which is weird, but okay.

I know a bit about genetics, I had it in school, but I don't know too much about the morphs themselves. But learning never hurt anyone, right?: )

Thank you again!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by maegalcarwen

But I am just so disappointed that the guy just simply couldn't tell anything about the father. I asked the breeder already, he didn't remember. Which is weird, but okay.

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He probably couldn't tell you because he paired more than one male with the mother. So, in the pewter vs. yellowbelly scenario, your baby didn't get a copy of the pastel, cinnamon, or yb gene. Therefore, he'd actually be lying to tell you it was the pewter when in all likelihood it could have been the yellowbelly and vice versa - no way to tell since the baby is a normal.

So now this has me concerned... I've had Pandora for 2 weeks now- she's eaten twice and shed once since I got her. The people I got her from said she was 10 months old and they were feeding her a hopper every 2 weeks. As of Thursday, she is 153 grams and approximately 20 inches long. I'm feeding her weekly, but I'm afraid to give her anything bigger than a hopper because she tends to catch them by the back end and isn't big enough to kill them fast. I'm afraid anything bigger will be able to bite her while being constricted. I really can't handle the idea of f/t or pre killed. So- is she too small for her age? And should I go to bigger mice and not worry so much about her getting bit?

Well, if they told me that Cleopatra was underweight, and she is 3-4 months younger than your Pandora, then yeah I guess she is underweight. What's wrong with feeding f/t? She should eat adult mice already, or maybe middle rats.

Annarose,

thank you! Too bad: ) I read a bit about it, now I understand. Maybe one day I'll breed snakes, and then it would turn out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by UltraViolet

So now this has me concerned... I've had Pandora for 2 weeks now- she's eaten twice and shed once since I got her. The people I got her from said she was 10 months old and they were feeding her a hopper every 2 weeks. As of Thursday, she is 153 grams and approximately 20 inches long. I'm feeding her weekly, but I'm afraid to give her anything bigger than a hopper because she tends to catch them by the back end and isn't big enough to kill them fast. I'm afraid anything bigger will be able to bite her while being constricted. I really can't handle the idea of f/t or pre killed. So- is she too small for her age? And should I go to bigger mice and not worry so much about her getting bit?

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they catch them any way they like, then quickly kill by constricting and disrupting the blood stream of the rhodent, and then usually swallow it head first once its dead. They go searching for the head after the rhodent is dead; if a BP swallows backwards or folds it the food item is probarbly just too small. I think you just underestimate your BP a bit and could go for larger food, aim for 10-15% of the weight of the snake every 5-7 days. If you want to stick to smaller food, you can feed one prey item, wait until its down, wait another 5-10 minutes, and feed a second one if the snake is still searching and paying attention, and so on, until you reach the right weight. increase the amount of food per feeding, dont increase the frequency of feeding, stick to 5-7 days.


and to both of you..... pictures do more for me than age + weight or weight + length, in a picture you can see if a BP is well-fed or on the thin side so easily. If you can post or link pictures it will be easy.... even for the europeans that dont understand inches, even if you made the mistake of measuring the length of a full shed under the impression that it would make it easier :) (sheds tend to be quite a bit longer by some random amount).

Thanks, Kurtilein, that was exactly the kind of information I was hoping for. I had decided to get her an adult mouse but the pet store was completely out, so I got 2 hoppers. She ate both really fast, and might have gone for a third, but was much more content after two than I've ever seen her. She was also much more coordinated about catching them. I think she's just been really hungry for a long time and now that she's getting more is less frantic about it.

http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/claudia_b/8716712504/


I can't figure out how to post pictures directly using my phone, so here's a link.

I posted pictures of her a while ago, would you be so kind to look at it? I also have them in my gallery. Inches are just not handy, but anything can be multiplied, don't worry about that.