Obese Snake?

I've been keeping an eye on my female snow corn's weight. I weigh her every few months. She is around 2 years old now, an '06, but I'm not sure of her exact hatch date. The previous weight on her was around 330g. I figured this was a normal adult weight and continued to feed her normally, sometimes skipping a feeding here and there. The other night, it was feeding day and I decided to see how much my young girl weighed. She has been looking plump these days and I didn't want her to get too big. She weighs 400g. Is this normal for a corn snake? I've always thought them small slim snakes. Is she too big or should I keep feeding her normally?

post a pic, best way to tell.

We can't tell just by weight and age if she is obese.. length is a big factor in what she should weigh, but eyeballing the shape of the snake is how you tell in most cases.

Corns, in my experience, are easy to overfeed. The one I had as a kid was an eating machine, and always seemed hungry, even though she started to get a bit overweight, and I backed off her feeding frequency.

P.S. corns aren't what I would call "small" snakes, they can get pretty darn long, but they certainly are slim. I have seen some incredible sizes of corn snakes, those 8 or 10 year old(or older) corns can be surprisingly big.

The most recent picture I have of her is when she hit 330g. I will try and get one today and post it up. She never refuses a meal. She has only refused once when she was eating hopper mice a long time ago and that was because of a shed. Other than that, she has eaten every week (unless I skipped a week on purpose) that I offer.

Do her scales look streched out or is the skin visible under them? I know this is a sign of obesity for ball pythons. Not sure if it applies to corns though.

-Dennis

Its still going to be kinda hard to tell if you post a pic to be able to determine if she is obese.Is she very active?

She should feel fit and somewhat firm when you hold her. If she feels overly squishy, she may be over weight. Corns are slim snakes, but they still can be decent sized. My largest one is ~750g. He's about 5ft long and perfectly healthy. So a corn in the 400+ range isn't out of the ordinary - one of my '06 girls is 525g, but not obese.

She doesn't feel squishy at all. I have no idea how long she is, so maybe she's just a big girl, or getting to be a big girl. :) She's my baby girl so I just wanted to make sure she wasn't getting too pudgy. Thank you. :D

You do know that snakes don't have to be "obese" to be unhealthy right? Just being overweight can also cause health problems.

I'm not taking knocks on you or your snake. Just pointing out that not being obese doesn't signify a healthy snake size. : )

-Dennis

I'm not sure if the lack of this guarantees a healthy weight, but I've seen pictures of overweight corn snakes and read descriptions of them getting "hippy". Basically, their body all the way down to the vent will be large, then the tail will suddenly be slimmer, giving the impression of them having hips.

I'll try to dig up some links so you can see pics of what I mean.

I feed my adult corns about every 10 days rather than once a week. Works for me.

Here are some extreme examples of that "hippy" look. I couldn't seem to find any that were more moderate, although I know I have seen them in the past. I think perhaps on this other forum you need to be logged in to see pics, so if you can't see them let me know.

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69477
http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62859
http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74664

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kc261

Here are some extreme examples of that "hippy" look. I couldn't seem to find any that were more moderate, although I know I have seen them in the past. I think perhaps on this other forum you need to be logged in to see pics, so if you can't see them let me know.

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69477
http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=62859
http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=74664

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I can't see them..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hyper Joe

I can't see them..

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If you sign up to that forum, the pictures will show up. They do not show up if you are not a reg'd member.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lillyorchid

If you sign up to that forum, the pictures will show up. They do not show up if you are not a reg'd member.

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Yes I am aware you need to log in to see the pics.
But as kc261 noted "..so if you can't see them let me know..."
So I am. Hopefully someone can post them here. I do not want to create a log in somewhere I will never be.

Here are the pics.


http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/att...1&d=1214911068

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/att...1&d=1202074733

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/att...1&d=1224399278

-Dennis

Hi,

You do know if that had worked I would have had to disable them back to being links as it would be hotlinking don't you? :P

In fact I will do it anyway just in case - we don't want them to think we're being rude or anything. :gj:


dr del

I'm confused. You're not allowed to post pics?

Hi,

Sorry I tend to forget people might not know some of the wierder terminology. :oops:

Hotlinking is when you post a picture that is hosted on someone elses site but do it as a picture instead of a link. This means that whenever anyone looks at the thread those pictures get downloaded from the other persons site costing them bandwidth.

If you post them as links however they only get downloaded when someone is intrested enough to click them - it is considered far more polite in "netiquette". :)

So posting this;

http://www.satanswombat.pwp.blueyond...0248shrunk.JPG

eats up a lot more of the sites bandwidth than this;

http://www.satanswombat.pwp.blueyond...0248shrunk.JPG


To try and stop this a lot of sites do what cornsnakes.com has and block pictures or attatchments if people are not logged in to thier forums.

We looove pictures being posted but you have to be carefull they are either on your own site or one one of the sites that allow hotlinking - places like imageshack etc.

Or indeed in your own gallery space on this site. :)

The only other points we require is, if the picture is not one you took yourself, you give proper credit to the owner and, if possible, get their permission or say where you found the picture.

That way they at least get the credit they deserve and everyones rights are respected - similarly if they do not want the pictures shared they should not be posted. That doesn't happen often but it has happened and the pictures were deleted.

Sorry for writing a novel but I didn't want to miss any bits out.


dr del

Makes sense. Thanks!

And sorry for the hijack.

Joining the other community only takes 2 minutes and then you never have to go back there if you don't want...not a huge deal. But it looks very active so I'll probably hang around for a bit. : )

And the snakes are definitely obese in the pics and have HUGE "hips."