Feeding schedule for 100g snakes

I have been doing every 6 days for 3 weeks now. Thinking of switching to every 3 days. They are eating fine and seem explorative a day before I'd want them to be, meaning I feel like they are looking for food. In 2 weeks average weight gain would be around 18g. Lowest is 10g and highest is like 45g or something crazy. So thoughts?

These are there numbers from 2 weeks apart. 2 days after feeding whether they pooped or not. http://i1370.photobucket.com/albums/...psqbkfll38.jpg

A few thoughts:

• For hatchlings, it's not unusual at all to see 100 gram gains per month - your 45 gram weight gain in 2 weeks is actually not crazy at all
• Your statement of "whether they pooped or not" will give you somewhat misleading data; "empty" (after pooping, before feeding) weights will give you a much better idea of their actual weight gain
• I would definitely increase feeding to at least every 4th day; snakes that are growing quickly will benefit from increased frequency of meals (and every 4th day is the generally accepted method until they are eating small rats - then they get switched to weekly meals)
• You also didn't say what size meal they're actually eating; since you have a scale, you can go one of two ways - either feed a meal 10-15% of the snake's empty weight, or eyeball it and feed a meal equivalent to the widest part of the snake's body; personally, until I was confident in my eyeballing skills, I weighed every single meal for my snakes (and truthfully, even though I'm a good "eyeballer" now, I still weigh every rat for my own OCD records)

I hope this helps!

Thanks a bunch. Getting dressed and going to go drive 3 hours for feeders. I can't take out of my colony of mice yet. Need to build more. Appreciate the response it helps a lot.

I do 3 or 4 days.

Appreciate the responses. They all ate today. Grabbed mice that were maybe 2cm smaller than usual. Thinking I will do every 3 to 4 days like Pit said. Depending on digestion and pooping I will augment feeding size.

My female lesser enchi actually struck it without needing to be hidden and waiting 2 hours. I am happy she is getting her feeding drive back. She was so picky the last 3 weeks. Didn't want to eat in public and would only accept small prey after 2 hours. Today she smashed a larger size than her last feeding. Proud of her. Patrick Swayze my Mojave ghost was the only one who was shy. He needed a newspaper covering his tub for a half hour to eat.

All in all feeding went great. I knew I needed to feed more frequently. But I didn't want to stress them. This was the first time I had animals shipped. Before it was all hand to hand transactions.

I feed my little 8 week old 138 gram girl every 3 days with a rat fuzzy/pup that weighs about 25 grams. It's a little more than 15% but she is a machine and pretty much instantly pops out of her hide and grabs them within a couple of mins of being in the cage.

Okay. I need to get more breeding pairs of rats it seems. Mice were just what I have always used. I can get a few colonies setup on Thursday so. Appreciate the response. I will see what my next meals weigh for sure.

My advice is switch to rats asap. You don't want to have to feed mice as you will go broke trying to feed all those snakes 4-5 mice each per feeding. I switched Dot over to the rat fuzzies/pups the instant I got her mostly for the reason I stated. Also my red tail eats rats so it just makes it easier for me as I just need to buy one type of rodent vs 1 rat and 4 or 5 mice and carry all these boxes around.

...and rats won't eat each other on the way home like mice will. Last week I came home with 1 & 1/2 mice to feed to corn snakes... luckily one of my smaller bp's was in shed and wasn't interested in the rat pup, so my corns all ate bigger meals.

Will call the company in the morning I ordered 5 colonies. Will just get all rats.

I have my little guy on a five day feeding schedule, and it seems to work ok for him, so whatever works for you, just so long as it doesn't get to the point of power feeding :gj:

I agree I did worry about that. But from what I read it's all about a per snake digestion rate. If they look bloated I won't feed. I have been giving small feedings all around because I worry a lot about animals over eating and dying. Cornish cross chickens do it all the time. Probably lost 15 this year due to that.

What does everyone think about feeding live chick's? I heard the poop smells bad when they eat chicken but they love it so much they won't switch back to rodents. Any ideas or experiences?

No, but I considered quail eggs for my corns.

I worry about the whole mouse/rat crossover problem when mine gets bigger but unfortunately the only thing available locally is f/t mice. They go up to 15g I think or maybe a bit bigger but I'm worried he will stop eating when I have to switch him to rats.

Currently he weighs in at 99g and eats two f/t 7g mice. I'm about to have to bump up as I really want him to put some more weight on but I'm a little overly cautious about giving him something too big for him to swallow. The 7g f/t look about the same girth as his widest point so I'm not sure what to do aside from just trying to feed him 3 next time.

Will I need to try converting him to rats as soon as he is big enough to swallow them or will I be able to feed him hopper mice (the largest mice size available here :() for a decent amount of time?

7g:O

Thats not even close to proper intake.
15 to 20g would be good.

A lot of my snakes can gain 100 grams a month no problem, no matter their age. I feed rats and feed appropriately sized rats at that. I feed about once a week now cus my schedule is terrible. But when I had more free time for the snakes I was feeding ALL my snakes every 3-5 days. If they eat great, if not it's ok. I have never had an "obese" ball python. Instead I have had balls with some good girth on them, which helps for egg laying. I have personally never had an issue whatsoever.

Now back to someone talking about the feeders eating each other. I have only had them eat each other on the way the home if they are dehydrated or hungry. For the most part they will be fine for a while. Heck when we would put away the feeders that didn't get eaten, we hardly saw acts of cannibalism. But I have seen rats eats rats (they usually eat the smaller ones, fuzzies, crawlers), I have seen mice eat fuzzy rats, and I have seen rats eat mice.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PitOnTheProwl

7g:O

Thats not even close to proper intake.
15 to 20g would be good.

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Right, like I said he eats 2 each time, and the size fluctuates so he's eating around 15g-17g each feed.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Karokash

I worry about the whole mouse/rat crossover problem when mine gets bigger but unfortunately the only thing available locally is f/t mice. They go up to 15g I think or maybe a bit bigger but I'm worried he will stop eating when I have to switch him to rats.

Currently he weighs in at 99g and eats two f/t 7g mice. I'm about to have to bump up as I really want him to put some more weight on but I'm a little overly cautious about giving him something too big for him to swallow. The 7g f/t look about the same girth as his widest point so I'm not sure what to do aside from just trying to feed him 3 next time.

Will I need to try converting him to rats as soon as he is big enough to swallow them or will I be able to feed him hopper mice (the largest mice size available here :() for a decent amount of time?

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He can swallow appropriate sized rats now.

Question: why on EARTH did you name a snake hentai? Or maybe I don't want to know...

She was a very delicate little snake. She's an enchi lesser and looks like a flower all curled up. I asked my friend for a Japanese flower name and he laughed then said Hentai. I had to go with it. So many people ask haha. I personally don't know how some people like real Hentai but that's a bit of an off topic condo heh. But yeah that's the story lol.