Shayna - Our Albino Spider Ball

[plateOfFlan]

It's cute how you can see each snake's personality by their different poses

[dakski]

It's cute how you can see each snake's personality by their different poses

I agree. It's cool to have different species and different personalities within species.

Shayna was acting pretty adventurous with Ally. She was exploring and having a good old time. She usually gets there after a couple of minutes after going through her, "why are you bothering me, I like being in the dark in my hide," phase.

The boas, corns, and Yafe (CP), are you usually pretty happy to explore as soon as they are out.

[dakski]

Shayna shed yesterday. She's looking great for ten years old (earlier this month was her birthday). Heck, she looks good for any age!

[Bogertophis]

She's looking great, Dave. Funny how snakes always head for the cracks between the cushions though- how do they even "know"?

[dakski]

Some pics of Shayna. She's doing great.

[Kam]

She is beautiful as always....

[YungRasputin]

zi iz sheyn! aun ikh hob zeyer lib ir nomen!

[dakski]

Last night, Shayna refused her first meal this winter.

It's her first refusal in 9 months. She's doing great and I have zero concerns. I am surprised she hadn't refused sooner.

The data does point to smaller meals generally lead to fewer refusals and less fasting in the winter. Granted, one BP is hardly a large data point, but with her, the change from medium rats every 2-3 weeks to small rats every 2 weeks has been dramatic. She grew, she now maintains her weight well, and she only misses a few meals a year.

Curious what others think about the smaller meals for adults idea. Either way, works for Shayna.

[Bogertophis]

...Curious what others think about the smaller meals for adults idea. Either way, works for Shayna.

I totally agree. Better for them, health-wise, to avoid over-feeding (& many pet snakes are over-fed). Not just for BPs either- when I had a large female BCI, I only fed her small or medium p/k rats except once, when I gave her a large rat & immediately regretted doing so. She was 7.5' at the time- but she was clearly uncomfortable digesting it, despite having plenty of size to do so. I don't doubt that feeding on the slim side also results in fewer meals being refused, so why waste time & money feeding larger than necessary prey? Snakes don't eat this regularly in the wild, that's for sure.

[dakski]

I totally agree. Better for them, health-wise, to avoid over-feeding (& many pet snakes are over-fed). Not just for BPs either- when I had a large female BCI, I only fed her small or medium p/k rats except once, when I gave her a large rat & immediately regretted doing so. She was 7.5' at the time- but she was clearly uncomfortable digesting it, despite having plenty of size to do so. I don't doubt that feeding on the slim side also results in fewer meals being refused, so why waste time & money feeding larger than necessary prey? Snakes don't eat this regularly in the wild, that's for sure.

I think some of that is species related and when bigger is prey is introduced.

BP's are very efficient with food and spend a lot of time curled in hides (in captivity) and burrows (in the wild). Additionally, look at what BP's eat in the wild; African soft fur rats. They are much smaller than the rats we can get in pet stores (normally) and from rat breeders (also Frozen). A medium rat from most online frozen rat retailers is 90-150G, while a large ASF rat is barely 80-90F (the size of a larger small rat from most retailers/breeders). A large rat from most frozen retailers/breeders is about 200-220G. That would be huge for a BP considering many BP's have trouble or skip meals with medium rats. Point here is look at what they eat in the wild as a good indication for captivity, where they are even more sedentary.

Bottom line here, small rats are probably good for most BP's.

Regarding boas, I slow grow them, probably more than necessary, but it doesn't hurt them at all.

Take Behira (BI). She's 6 1/2 years old now and about 3.1kg. She has great body definition. Yes, I feed her larger rats, but she does fine with them and I waited until she hit a plateau at about 2.5kg at about 6 years old. Of course, I feed every 3 weeks and will feed large rats (likely) for the rest of her life. As she slows her growth, I will probably move feedings to every 3-4 weeks or less. My male BI (Jeff) and Dwarf BC (Feliz) will likely never get more than medium rats.

Even efficiently fed boas can get larger (substantially) than BP's and although they don't need larger meals, can benefit from them. I speak to Jeff Ronne (the Boaphile) regularly. He said he has "smaller" boas that he's never fed more than medium rats and they live long and healthy lives. Then there are people and breeders who want rush things and feed large meals and more frequently. Jeff recommends against this. When we spoke about Behira, he felt it was time to move her up to large rats because she had been at 2.5kg for months eating medium rats every two weeks. I do not mind her getting to a reasonable size, as long as it's not hurting her.

Then there are other pythons who can eat large meals, especially when growing. Carpet Python's can eat 15-20% of their body weight while growing. Yafe did eat about 15% for a while, but now eats about 7-10% every 2 weeks. He's on medium rats and weighs about 1.8kg. He's much more active then Shayna and still growing a little. He's all over his enclosure climbing and in general, being active, once his meal(s) is/are digested.

Anyway, I digressed and don't want to steal Shayna's thread, but food for thought.

The takeaway here. Know your species, know your snake(s), and understand it's much easier to overfeed in captivity because of a) a more sedentary lifestyle, and b) readily available food (and at all different sizes).

I've put links below to the snakes I mentioned in this post.

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...host-First-BCI

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...ngle-het-Anery

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...Dwarf-quot-BCC

https://ball-pythons.net/forums/show...ression-Thread