Feeding amount at young age, Does it effect overall growth?

[escomaya]

I just read in some thread the other day that if you feed your snake the bare minumum for the first year or 2, that the snake wont get much bigger as its final size? Is this true, will it stunt their overall growth?

I want big healthy snakes, not fat, nor skinny! Im pretty sure someone who has gotten a rescued snake can clearify this.

[Slim]

Most rescue BPs I've heard about that were being under fed caught up to normal rates of growth once they were fed properly. I don't think that theory holds much water.

[anatess]

I've read that feeding a bp too much can shorter its lifespan...

[mainbutter]

To a certain degree, feeding affects overall growth in all dimensions regarding size for all animals.

Snakes grow throughout their entire life however(though it greatly slows down later in life) while humans however stop growing in height completely, which is why underfed snakes are more able to "catch up" in size. Humans stunted by underfeeding don't catch up.

[RobbinRN]

I don't have a lot of experience, but I did adopt a BP that was about 6 or 8 months older than mine. She weighed about 600 grams in relation to my younger male who weighed 574 at the time. She was a little longer, but definitely skinnier. I started feeding her on the same schedule as Alice and she filled out quite nicely. Now, six months later, she weighs 1110 (1326 before fast) and he weighs 1039 (1106 before fast). She caught up fast.

Robbin

[frankykeno]

In this thread you'll see pictures of a snake we took in years ago. She came to us at almost 2 years old but about the size of a 6 to 8 month old female ball python.

http://www.ball-pythons.net/forums/s...200#post998200

Put on a proper diet she gained quickly, both in length and weight. Last year she produced a beautiful 7 egg clutch for us.

My experience with her and with other ball pythons that are non-feeding or neglected snakes seems to indicate that a very young snake (pre-adult) may be stunted temporarily because they are simply not taking in enough calories to do much more than support basic life functions and leaves nothing left over to promote growth. These snakes though are hardy at their core and seem bounce back quite nicely under good management.

[Mike Cavanaugh]

yeah, have to agree with the others. I took in a rescue about 7 months ago. It was 6 years old, and about the size of yearling. since then it has eaten a rediculous amount of food, and litterally has become one of my biggest snakes.

[frankykeno]

We took in a female, we call her Danu, that was a gravid import. She had at least two owners before us and as far as we were told never ate, or at least only sporadically, after importation and dropping her eggs. When we got her she was a full sized adult as far as length and build but only weighed 600 grams. There's just about nothing worse than holding an adult female ball python that thin - just skin over bone really.

The "non-eater" is now over 1,800 grams and an ASF eating machine. In fact we often refer to her as Miss Piggie since she'll snarf down ASF's till the cows came home if we didn't limit her to a reasonable amount weekly. She just needed to be treated as a wild caught adult, have her stress and shock dealt with and get introduced to captivity in a manner she could learn to live with. She's become a lovely snake to handle as well and seems to have lost her natural fear of people.