Quote Originally Posted by Danounet View Post
In my family, we have a 8 year old black lab. Gorgeous and best dog ever. Anyways. We had her since she was very few months old. She ALWAYS had and has food in her bowl. She has always fed herself. She is not obese and never has been.

But then again every dog breed is different. I Just wanted to let you know and about her self feeding and not being obese.
He he..... I've also got a black lab and if I left food in his bowl all the time he'd eat himself silly......

Just goes to show how different the same/similar animals can be.....

Thanks for the comments all....

@NorthernRegius - You are right about BPs in the wild. These animals have lived hundreds of thousands of years on a very erratic (natural) feeding routine. They may eat 2 rats in one day then eat nothing for 6 months and they still grow and breed and live long. We must also not forget that balls in the wild may be more active than those in captivity, their need for food may cause them to move around more than a ball that has been conditioned to expect food to be brought to it.

There are some schools of thought out there that perhaps an inconsistent feeding schedule is actually better for the animal. Inconsistent feeding mimics how it would be in the wild and helps provide the right level of food input in relation to the animal's energy consumption. We must not forget that in the wild a rat does not appear every friday at 6pm......

This is one reason I feel that we may be making our little girls and guys overweight. This is an area I'm definitely more interested in investigating further...

@Greghall. - I agree with feeding youngsters more as they are growing quicker and have need for more food imo.

But I must ask the question, why must your girls be fat?

Thanks again for the replies. I'm still keen to hear from the older school on this matter, if you have a ball python that is 10-15yrs+, what size are they and how much do you feed them?