A bit too thicc?

Hey everyone!
Pua is definitely growing big and strong! With a good shed and eating like a champ, he's doing great! However, someone mentioned that he may seem a little tooo Chunky. He weighs 328.85 as of today and is 7 months old. He's definitely thicker than last week when he went into shed. He's eating small rats every 7 days. Is he too much of a chunk? Or his e x t r a t h i c c n e s s not so bad?https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...2d51349d1b.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...1bbeb2c9f3.jpg


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I would be feeding him weaned rats at that size. I only just moved my 600g male to small rats weekly.

That's one big boy with a sausage butt to go with lol! He is handsome though.

Hm, he does look a bit overly fat to me, toward the tail is starting to look like some butt suck is going on.

And if I'm judging size correctly, he looks thicker around than my 2yr old. But if he hasn't pooped recently, that might be what's causing the butt suck look. Otherwise, you caught him at a good point b/c some spine definition is still visible; once that's gone they're pushing toward obese.

Would eating large adult mice help? Is that too small? My local pet stores don't have weaned rats


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Spacing out his feeding might help, just aim for more like 10 days instead of 7.

They can do fine on that and it should help him to trim down.

Here is more of his tail if it helps. He just had a doo doo today. A big one. That's a poo He's been holding in for almost two weekshttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...084388a39f.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...c503d38eac.jpg


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I'd say it's definitely early on and if he was a female you were intending to breed it might be absolutely fine. But since this is a male, I'd definitely say spacing out his feedings a bit more might be a good way to keep him from putting on even more weight and should help him normalize.

You have to pay more money at once, but would you be able to order some weaned rats online? Spacing out feedings will certainly help, but when eating such an over-sized meal, it can only do so much. Imo best practice would be to reduce prey size AND feeding frequency to 7-10 days or so. Some websites like Layne Labs offers smaller package sizes if needed, but even without vacuum-packing, rodents can last in your freezer for 6-8 months. Keep them vacuum-packed and that stretches out to 1-3 years. So, if you have the money and freezer space, I'd just buy some rats in bulk online if that size isn't available locally.

Hopefully this helps.

I would order your rats online. MUCH cheaper and all sizes avail. If you can cover the up front cost you save HUGE in the long run. If an expo is coming your way you can grab there and save on shipping too.

But yeah, you're overfeeding at this point. Not in a dangerous way, but feeding the appropriate sized prey would be best for your animal.https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...fa307f91fd.jpg

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