How often do you feed?

[jmitch]

I was wondering how often everyone feeds. I was going to switch my feedings from 7 to 5 days to plump up my female. Can I do this or is it a bad idea? I am doing it because she was under fed in pet store.

[Toddnkaya]

Every 5 days should be fine.

[drkness90]

i do 5 days but i also have a bp that was underfed so im trying to get him back to what he should be and its easier to just feed everyone at the same time.

[AK907]

I'm essentially copying and pasting my response from another thread. Hope this helps.

With a malnourished ball I would start slowly and work your way up. If you feed them too much at once right off the bat you can make them very sick and even cause internal damage. You've gotta think about how their stomachs and metabolisms aren't as good as a healthy ball. You should be fine with your 5 day schedule, but I would start with one small prey item for a couple feeding, then two small prey items for a few feedings, and so on until you work up to an appropriate sized meal. For example, if your ball python weighs 500 grams, an appropriate sized meal would be in the 50-75g range. So for your first few meals I would offer half that to get her metabolism going and her stomach used to having food in it, then progress from there. We've rescued dozens of snakes over the years and we have always used this method with excellent results. Most people on here will tell you to do the same.

Good luck!

[snakesRkewl]

I offer most of my snakes twice a week, young ones and breeding females especially.
Breeding males typically get once a week meals but some get twice, especially if they try to take my arm off when opening their tub.

Do they always eat twice a week? nope, but I offer most everyone small meals twice a week.

[TheSnakeEye]

I do what Snakesrkewl does... I feed twice a week, except I feed everyone twice a week. I usually never have any refusals, but when I do I just keep the rat for an extra couple of days and they usually take it then. My young ones will eat everyday if they can.

[RetiredJedi]

I feed one appropriately sized meal a week.

[benwallage9]

I needed to get weight on my breeder females this year so for about 2 months I had them on a every 4 day feeding schedule. I also had my younger smaller snakes on this schedule to get some size on them. I kept my males at 7 days because they were big enough and I didn't want to make them obese. Now that I have started breeding I have all my snakes on one meal a week. The main difference between now and then is the meal size, when I was feeding every 4 days the meals where roughly 30% smaller then what I feed now.

So example would be my pastel and het pied where eating small rats around 70 grams on the 4 day schedule and now they are on the 7 day schedule they have medium rats roughly 100 grams.

[Tidus10]

every 3 days for my females and hatchlings..

[jmitch]

ty everyone I am going to switch to every 5 and see if she gains any wait.