How Frequently Do You Feed Your BPs?

[Waffles13ilj]

What about parasites? Isn't that an advantage to feeding f/t?

[51-50 Python]

What about parasites? Isn't that an advantage to feeding f/t?

u mean as in live mice have parasites and frozen ones dont? plenty of ppl feed live mice and have never had a problem with parasites

[rabernet]

Hate to burst your bubble, but if it has more nutritional value, its better for your snake right? Nutritionally to say the least

Not necessarily - hypothetically, if live has more Vitamin D than f/t for example, but ball pythons require less Vitamin D than f/t - is it better for them or not? Both will meet their requirements. But since we don't know what their nutritional requirements are, we can't say that one is superior to the other.

We know that Vitamin C is good for us, but we also know that too much Vitamin C is not good for us.

[WaRocker]

Maybe mine eats like a horse? He eats about every 4 days and downs 2 fuzzies. Usually I can tell on the 3rd night or so he is hungry because he is hunting in the tank for food all night long.
He is about 16" long.. weight unknown... He looks fat and happy..

[Freakie_frog]

I feed my baby and juvi balls every 5 days. Until they hit 1000 grams or close to it. My sub adults and adults get offered every 7 days. As to is one way more nutritional I'm really not sure anyone can offer that answer with 100% certainty at this point. As a whole we know very little about snakes and their true nutritional needs. We offer feeder that are more available and easier to deal with and it seems to work.

[Texas Dan]

Well, how do we know how often they eat in the wild? Does somebody chill out for a couple of weeks and follows one BP to see it's feeding habits? Or are we just guessing they should eat once a week?

I feed live because.. well, there are no F/T rats in the wild.

[missi182]

Maybe mine eats like a horse? He eats about every 4 days and downs 2 fuzzies. Usually I can tell on the 3rd night or so he is hungry because he is hunting in the tank for food all night long.
He is about 16" long.. weight unknown... He looks fat and happy..

Instead of feeding so frequently perhaps you should up your prey size. You can grab a digital scale for $20 from wal-mart to weigh your snake to help get a better idea of what size prey he should get. I was feeding my juvenile bp fuzzies for a few weeks when I first got him (fuzzy mice) and quickly noticed he was simply still hungry all the time. That was because I wasn't feeding him enough... I moved him up to hoppers that were about 20 grams and he was still hunting every few days so now he is at 30 gram rats.

It is also easier for you to feed a bigger prey item then several small, but of course it is up to you how you want to feed your bp. As long as he has a full belly and is putting on weight (another reason a scale is a good idea) then its all good.

[FireproofGorilla]

I feed f/t. The python tends to be less aggressive and it's safer for the snake. She doesn't even constrict, she knows what she's getting and she's greatful for it. F/t is more humane. Feeding live also gives us herps a bad rep with the general public. When the public starts getting scared, they start proposing bans. You really should rethink your purpose for owning a snake if you got it for the entertainment value. A starving dog could eat a cat and get plenty of nutrition that way, but are you going to stop feeding it dog food? No, b/c no one should be entertained by a creature getting slaughtered.

[FireproofGorilla]

Maybe mine eats like a horse? He eats about every 4 days and downs 2 fuzzies. Usually I can tell on the 3rd night or so he is hungry because he is hunting in the tank for food all night long.
He is about 16" long.. weight unknown... He looks fat and happy..

I've got the same deal with mine. She's 21" & 140g now. She was 19.5" & 120g when I got her 3 weeks ago. She's not obese, but she'll down 2 fuzzies and she's on the prowl again by day 3. I took her to the vet for her intial (general) checkup and the vet said she's pretty healthy but I could bump her up to two feedings a week. Now I feed her 2 fuzzies every 3-4 days. She's in her first shed right now.

[Argentra]

Rather than feeding multiple fuzzies, try going up in prey size. Any snake should really only get a single prey item per feeding...unless that snake is just too large for any one reasonable prey item. (such as an adult female BP mouser).

Unless, of course, your snake just refuses to eat larger prey...like mine. Which is probably why she's underweight for her age. Nagini absolutely refuses to have anything to do with a mouse larger than just weaned. She's still small enough girth wise that this isn't a concern...and maybe I'll try offering food every 5 days to see if she takes it, but the point is you feed your snake whatever it will happily accept as often as it will accept it.