How Common Are Fat BPs Really?

In my experience, and in reading many threads here and elsewhere and talking with other keepers, it seems to me to be really hard to get a BP to be obese. I know it can happens with chain feeding and some forms of power feeding. But these are outliers to my knowledge. It is not an accepted practice. If anyone still does it it is being done underground.

But today I had someone on an FB group insist that obese BPs are common and many die from complications of it. They even claim there are many threads on this very forum about it. However, I can't seem to find these threads.

From what I know and have experienced BP's are very self regulating. If they don't need to eat they won't eat. I have been more worried about BP's starving themselves to death than eating too much.

What say you? Have I just missed it? Or is this person blowing things out of proportion?

Thanks.

I'm interested in this as well.

I feed as much as my snakes will eat and I do not have an obesity issue in my collection.
My food items are not large though so it may give them more 'portion control'.

my own (super limited) experience: so Coffee Bean (0.1 Super Cinnamon paradox) is a late 2017 hatchling, and came to me at 92g on 8/22. she's now 721g as of last night, presumably empty. she's a bit squishy; i think she might be fat. :oops: not obese, mind you, but i mean that's a heck of a lot of growth!!! my almost 2 year old CG girl is still under 700g. Coffee Bean was fed on a 3 or 5 day schedule when i first got her, but that was for about a month or so as she was constantly striking the side of the tub, and then she went to a rat pup/7 days. i also don't have much experience with bigger beeps as my biggest is my 800g+ 1.0 Albino but he's very obviously lean and muscular.

i have not seen many instances of obese BPs on here, especially older ones. Godzilla comes to mind when @Godzilla78 first got her; he had stated she was pretty fat and she slimmed down a lot thanks to him. he does not own that snake anymore, i believe. that's the only one i can think of from recent memory.

I've seen plenty of cases of obese boas and STP, but not many BPs. Maybe they were confused between BPs, STP, and Boas? I know my boas would eat every day if offered, so it is a common problem with them and does cause early death. I've also seen discussions on STP forums about how many keepers keep them too large or larger than they normally should be in the wild (have fat rolls, etc.) but I'm not sure if they die from complications like boas do.

Can be as common as fat dogs, fat cats, and fat children.

If you over feed an opportunistic predator without means to self regulate their intake due to evolution, you can end up with a fat and unhealthy snake. A fat snake is a shorter lived snake as when snakes eat their organs expand greatly and continually overfeeding puts a huge stress on their organs especially liver.

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Originally Posted by artgecko

I've seen plenty of cases of obese boas and STP, but not many BPs. Maybe they were confused between BPs, STP, and Boas? I know my boas would eat every day if offered, so it is a common problem with them and does cause early death. I've also seen discussions on STP forums about how many keepers keep them too large or larger than they normally should be in the wild (have fat rolls, etc.) but I'm not sure if they die from complications like boas do.

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^ yeah, i've seen more people overfeeding their boas and STP on here than beeps, but even then i don't think i've seen a fat/obese one. but the overfeeding seems like a common issue across the majority of owners who own those species.

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Originally Posted by artgecko

I've seen plenty of cases of obese boas and STP, but not many BPs. Maybe they were confused between BPs, STP, and Boas?

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Seen obese BP pics before around here but nothing recent that I can recall. BPs are kind chunky regardless though so it's probably not that easy to spot or something *I* think is too heavy, really isn't considered so by most people. Usually I'd see it in some adult breeder BPs. It doesn't seem to be 'the norm' or anything though or they just aren't being posted.

My girl Karma is too fat, this is an older photo, but looking fat to me. I stretched out her feeding a bit to try to get her a more uniform healthy shape/weight.
It's not sausage butt, she was chunky and looking overweight.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...seConZf8TD.jpg

I suspect that there's not a whole lot of fat BPs because the VERY commonly used feeding schedule is well established, easy to use, and doesn't lead to fat bps. 1 small rat once per week for adult bp doesn't seem to make them particularly fat and there's not much room for error.

On the other hand, I have fat garter snakes because I accidentally overfed them as babies since the guidance is fairly vague, indicates that it's hard to overfeed baby garters if you're not feeding mice but doesn't say where "babyhood" ends, and indicates that they have a much faster metabolism than most snakes and thus I allowed their hunger cues to be more of a guide for how I fed them. Unfortunately, I learned that they are bottomless pits who are always hungry and will enthusiastically beg 90% of the times I come near. My ball python is also a bit of a bottomless pit, but there was never room for feeding him more than once a week, so him looking for food significantly more often than that makes no difference.

Boas seem to also have more room for error since there's no good consensus on them either, other than that they don't need to be fed weekly once they're older. My dumeril's boa would gladly get super fat, but at least I learned my lesson with the garter snakes and thus ignore most of his begging.

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Originally Posted by AbsoluteApril

she was chunky and looking overweight.

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What were you feeding to make her overweight?

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Originally Posted by Lord Sorril

What were you feeding to make her overweight?

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Weaned rat every 7-10 days just like all the others. She just kept putting on girth instead of length. So I moved her out to 10-14 days for a while.

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Originally Posted by AbsoluteApril

Weaned rat every 7-10 days just like all the others. She just kept putting on girth instead of length. So I moved her out to 10-14 days for a while.

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do you have a more recent photo of her? i'd love to see how she slimed down.

Was pretty interested in what others have to say on this too. Personally I haven't seen any, but i'm sure they exist from what i'm reading above.

I've also learned to avoid facebook groups, in my own experience. They always seem to be giving different information every 5 seconds.

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Originally Posted by AbsoluteApril

Weaned rat every 7-10 days just like all the others. She just kept putting on girth instead of length. So I moved her out to 10-14 days for a while.

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Could just be genetics then-more efficient metabolism-probably would gain back weight faster after eggs and be ready to go again...

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Originally Posted by Slicercrush

Was pretty interested in what others have to say on this too. Personally I haven't seen any, but i'm sure they exist from what i'm reading above.

I've also learned to avoid facebook groups, in my own experience. They always seem to be giving different information every 5 seconds.

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Tell me about it. This came out of a Boa group BTW. I am only part of it to see the pics at this point. There are some pretty elitest people in that group.

Fat bps tend to be adult females, as babies grow faster after being fed more, and males tend to fast more as adults. Back when the bp breeding boom was happening, I saw alot more fat snakes due to power feeding in a rush to get them pumping out dollar bills, but these days it's less common.

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Originally Posted by MasonC2K

Tell me about it. This came out of a Boa group BTW. I am only part of it to see the pics at this point. There are some pretty elitest people in that group.

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I hear you on that one. I think many people on FB groups just regurgitate what they have been told by mods, etc. as the gospel with little or no experience. The person on the boa group was probably just applying what they've seen to BPs (i.e. if there are a lot of fat boas, there must be a lot of fat BPs) or they don't know the proper body shape of BPs vs. what you would want in a boa.

I've honestly had a hard time getting my BPs to put on weight and eat consistently.

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Originally Posted by artgecko

... or they don't know the proper body shape of BPs vs. what you would want in a boa.....

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I suspect this is half of the problem. :rolleyes: I've seen some obese boas for sure, but can't think of any obese BPs. And most boas are always willing to eat, so many
new keepers just over-feed them.

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Originally Posted by tttaylorrr

do you have a more recent photo of her? i'd love to see how she slimed down.

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I'll see what I can do to get a new photo, all the beepers ate last night so it may be a few days.

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Originally Posted by Bogertophis

I've seen some obese boas for sure, but can't think of any obese BPs.

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first one that pops up on a google image search, this one: http://wheremyscalesslither.tumblr.c...e/135342936503

There was a user here that posted their breeders, I considered they were obese, I went back but they deleted all the photos from their gallery and threads. /shrug

I do agree though - obese boas are seen a lot more often. Body shape of a python is simply different from a boa and it's a lot more obvious in boas although I don't know if I can correlate that to mean it's more common as well. Might be though!

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Originally Posted by Alter-Echo

Back when the bp breeding boom was happening, I saw alot more fat snakes due to power feeding in a rush to get them pumping out dollar bills, but these days it's less common.

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agreed, and this is a good thing. :)

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...com/55h4ed.jpg

This girl is getting pretty chunky. It may not be obvious just from looking at her, but her body is a lot more squishy than my other snakes. I keep meaning to dial back the feedings a notch, but she's my garbage disposal. Seems like every time I try to skip a feeding someone else refuses to eat and it ends up in her tub. I think there's a conspiracy.


While I think it's possible to overfeed a BP, I don't think it's common. I haven't seen many that I'd consider overweight.

I'd think the idea that no BP could become "obese" and have health complications based via overfeeding would be naive, no? The simple answer would be no, but that's often in comparison to other relatable species like burms which are prone to being overfed. Overfeeding with BPs would typically refer to oversized prey rather than quantity of meals. But yea, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who can successful throw rodent after rodent in every other day and have their BP take them down and pass them on the regular without issue.

I have one girl that I would consider chubby. She’s not fat, but she’s a bit on the heavier side for her age and has a softer, squishier feel to her, she also has slight hips, though that could just be her holding a poop since she never doesn’t eat. But she’s been that way since I got her at 100g. She’s now about 1200g and I’ve had her right at a year. She’s getting one ~90g rat every 2 weeks.
I’ll get a pic in a few minutes. She’s the closest I have to a fat BP. The others are all slim and muscular by comparison, this is on a similar feeding schedule.

Kyle


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by tttaylorrr

do you have a more recent photo of her? i'd love to see how she slimed down.

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Terrible indoor photo but this is her today, been back on the regular schedule with the rest:
https://ball-pythons.net/forums/cach...8Ah4hJXx0t.jpg