Are we feeding too much?

[Serpent_Nirvana]

I know I already commented on another thread on this topic, so I'll try not to repeat myself TOO much. But ...

I, like Alicia, now feed on a very erratic feeding schedule. I have more blood pythons than ball pythons at this point, and bloods are very, very, VERY prone to obesity.

What I do is to feed to body condition. This means that I feed my snakes more or less based on how fat or thin they are looking to me at the time. With my adult bloods, this means that they usually end up eating maybe 6-20 times a *year* depending on the individual.

I do this even with my babies, though. A few years ago I lost one of my absolute favorite snakes, a super-stripe Borneo female, for no apparent reason whatsoever. When we cut her open, I found nothing unusual -- but I did find gobs and gobs and gobs of intracoelomic fat. I now seriously question whether she may have died from the stress of obesity on her internal organs. She was about a year old. I fed her once a week, and never more than that, giving her feeding "time off" for sheds.

I now have two other superstripe gals that I'm raising up now who are both about 2.5 years old. If I pushed them, I'm sure I could get them up to breeding weight by this year -- but I have NO intentions of doing that now. One of them is a voracious feeder who would probably eat 2x-week if I let her. I was feeding her every other week, but I'm giving her some "time off" food now because I feel that she's putting on more fat than I'd like her to. I'd like to give the rest of her growth (skeletal, etc) some time to catch up.

That brings me to my BPs, and the other part of feeding to body condition. I have a few girls I'm raising up now, but my two best eaters are my mojo and my pinstripe. My mojo is the larger of the two, and it seems that all of the weight she puts on is muscle and length. Her body feels very firm and muscular, not "squishy" and tubby. My pin, on the other hand, feels very soft, as if she's getting chunkier, but not a lot longer. Even though the pin is smaller, I'm more inclined to slow down her feeding schedule simply because it seems as though she's putting on fat, not muscle, and that isn't what I want in a growing animal.

I honestly don't know whether or not heavy feeding for a high growth rate of good, healthy muscle, bone and organ tissue is bad or not. In other words -- if you've got a baby that's eating a lot, and growing fast, but not putting on just pure fat -- I don't know that that's a bad thing. Can we somewhat extend the lifespan by nearly starving our pets to death? Yeah, maybe, but I don't know if I'd call that good animal husbandry. I've also read accounts that suggest that caloric restriction as a life-extender is just a myth based on false extrapolation of data in rodents. So I don't really feel like starving my pets just to give them a *theoretical* extra year or two of life.

As far as adult females go, I can see the logic of feeding them heavily when they are eating for those girls who are going to go on 4-6 month fasts. I just wouldn't want my girls to get too much fat, because not only is it unhealthy for her, but she's going to tend to slug out more and I would be much more concerned about dystocia (eggbinding) in a fat female.

Same with breeder boys -- enough weight to keep him healthy, but not so much fat that he's too sluggish and loses interest.

For pets -- they're gonna need a LOT less food to stay at that nice, healthy 4.5-6 body condition score. That's when the once-a-week constant feeding becomes truly excessive, IMO. I don't have any "pet only" BPs, but I know my "pet" blood who's a constant eater gets fed maybe 6-7x per year and STILL looks overweight to me.

No matter what, I always always always keep good, thorough records of my snakes' activities, including feeding. This is always important but especially so feeding on a more sporadic schedule.

tl;dr version: I feed to body condition with my adults AND growing youngsters, sporadic feeding is OK in my opinion, excess fat = bad and most blood pythons are too fat. /End rant.