Are we feeding too much?

[Egapal]

I was just thinking about something else that may contribute to this. What about housing and enclosures? I assume in the wild it goes something like, BP smells rat in hole, BP goes in hole, eats rat, stays in hole until hungry, BP goes off looking for another rat (or something similar). Now, since they are moving and roaming between kills or looking for mates, they would get a certain degree of exercise. I keep refering to my adult male because he is a good example. Currently he is in a 50gal tank, 36 X 18 X 18. After he eats he stays in his hides for about 3 days. But after that he is out roaming the tank, sometimes for hours at night. crawling around, trying to climb the walls etc. And he will do this every night until I feed him again. So he is, in effect, getting some exercise. Now compare that to my snakes who live in a tub.
The only time I see them out of their hides is when they are drinking water, switching hides, or passing waste. They might make a lap or two around the tub then it is back in the hide. I know roaming during the day is a sign of stress, but being nocturnal means they should be "active" at night. So is it possible that by keeping them in tubs, where they only have their hides and water bowl, that we are not providing them with the space to be active and get some needed exercise. I'm not saying that tubs are all bad, just that they may benefit better in a larger, or a tub with a little more room for them to roam, explore, search for food, work all their muscles,whatever you want to call it. Applying my human logic to reptiles, it would be like going to the gym and only doing bench presses and nothing else. Your chest and arms would benefit but your legs and stomach would remain soft and flabby. Kind of like keeping a dog on a short chain with no room to run around. I know that they are not arboreal but they do seem to enjoy climbing over and around branches and things, possibly because it lets them uses their muscles in different ways and burn off some of the calories. So I'm thinking in some cases, it may be not so much over-feeding, but under-excersise. There again, we need that government grant for the research...

I have read basically the same thing. Another thing worth mentioning is that we feed 1 appropriately sized meal because its easy for us. My understanding is that in the wild they will enter a burrow that usually has more than one rodent living inside. Eat the contents of the burrow and then digest till they are hungry. My BP lives in a 3x2x2 plastic enclosure and she exhibits the same behaviors. Eats, rests for 1 to 3 days depending on how many mice she ate. Then roams the enclosure seemingly looking for food. Occasionally like last night I will try to feed a day early. I offered a 34 gram mouse to her (711 grams) 6 days following a meal of 2 mice totallying 64 grams. She refused. Now I was thinking I really should have waited until I returned from a wedding this weekend and fed on Sunday (9 days from her last feeding.) As usual she proved to me that I should trust my instincts. My point with all that data is that if I feed to often she refuses, when she is ready she eats.

Like others have stated, this is a very interesting thread. It really highlights how little is actually known about these guys.

In reference to the discussion about feeding to satiation weekly and whether or not it was power-feeding: I've often read posts on here that after a period of gorging, BPs will go through a fasting period. It seems to me that feeding to satiation just makes sense if the snake will self-regulate how much it ingests.

In reference to shortened lifespan from snakes fed "a lot": There isn't enough information to draw any conclusions on this. A while back I read something that suggested, in general, snakes that are overfed have shortened lifespans but this seemed like observational/anecdotal evidence. In order to test this, you'd need long-term studies with pretty large sample sizes. I just don't see that happening for snakes, ever. Snakes are too long-lived and there's way too many variables with something like this to address.

As for snakes eating 10-15% of their body weight weekly in comparison to humans: It's an interesting argument, but snakes have lower metabolic rates than us; they don't have to provide their own body heat. If we go by that, then 10-15% seems like it'd be too much.

In regards to exercise, I think I'm starting to agree with Vypryz. Roaming in search of food would really burn calories; our snakes in their small enclosures don't ever really do anything. Vypryz, does your guy eat regularly in his large tank? Assuming that it's cluttered enough and ample temps and hides are provided, it seems like the way to go. I'm sure it's harder to manage for you (e.g. cleaning, maintaining temps) but it may just be better for your snake. I'm thinking I should let my girl roam around the floor (supervised of course) a bit more often.

Also, what's pinheading? I've long thought that my snake has a small head in relation to her body. I read something recently that suggested snakes fed larger food items have larger heads; I've fed my snake multiple mice for the past year until recently switching her to rats.

Sorry for the long post, but I hadn't replied in quite a while and wanted to address a few points. Also, I'll mention again that perhaps a length:weight relationship wouldn't be a bad idea. I think there's probably a stronger relationship than we think (addresses the idea of overweight snakes, even though all of our snakes may just be overweight to begin with) but we'd need quite a few snakes to find out anything. Just my thoughts...

-- B

Ball Pythons have small heads compared to their body normally but this can be made much worse by over feeding. I don't think this is something you can control by adjusting the size of the food items offered. This is like saying I shouldn't be fat because I only eat a single slice of pizza every hour vs, a whole pizza for dinner. Recently someone posted a study on fasting in snakes and basically found that when snakes fast their heads get bigger to allow the snake to consume a meal it would have otherwise had to pass on. The hungrier it gets the less choosy it can be. The reverse would make sense. If a snake is overfed its head could be staying small to keep it from eating larger and larger prey. The snakes brain isn't controlling these decisions nor is its stomach. The snakes body chemistry is, and the body chemistry doesn't know what size meals it gets only the quantity and frequency of food. In orther words two 17 gram mice will have the same effect on the body chemistry as one 34 gram mouse.

I really feel like the 10% - 15% rule needs to be scaled back as the snake gets older and bigger. My now 711 gram BP will take about 8% of her body weight weekly but this is an average. She will take 1 mouse 5%, 2 mice 10% or 3 mice once so far 15%. I let her decide and I keep detailed records. She will also skip a meal on occasion. I have seen many people defend the 10% - 15% "rule" but admit that they feed every 10 days or every 2 weeks. It would be really interesting to gets some hard data for snakes that regulate themselves well. Of course snakes are individuals. I have one fat cat and one skinny cat. They eat the same food and eat as much or as little as they want. If we took the weights, lengths, feeding dates, deification and urates dates, feeding dates, weight and number of food items offered for snakes that regulate themselves. Included husbandry data and enclosure type and size. We might be able to get a good idea of how much mass a BP should consume weekly. It would then be pretty easy to look at our individual schedules, prey types and decide if we need to make adjustments. If you are comming out low then you take a day of your schedule or add a day and offer another food item, or offer larger food items if you can do that.