How much of each rat goes towards body weight?

[aarondm]

Just wondering if anybody out there who does alot of weighing before and after feeding and after defication can tell me how much of each rat ends up going towards body weight. Different opinions welcome.

[Vypyrz]

I tend to think it depends on the frequency of feedings and the age of the snake. I think if a snake is on a set routine of frequent feedings then they will process less of each meal because their body adapts to the frequent feedings, where as a snake that is fed more infrequently will utilize more of the available nutrients in the prey...


Rob

[wilomn]

I tend to think it depends on the frequency of feedings and the age of the snake. I think if a snake is on a set routine of frequent feedings then they will process less of each meal because their body adapts to the frequent feedings, where as a snake that is fed more infrequently will utilize more of the available nutrients in the prey...


Rob

That doesn't sound right, though I have no science to back that up.

Seems that absorption would be fairly consistent since there is no way for the snake to know if it would be eating weekly or monthly or whatever.

An interesting question which has been discussed before.

I think if you actually mean how many grams of a 50 gram rat becomes snake and how much snake poop, I think the answer would be fairly consistent whether feedings were regular or not.

I'd like to know the answer myself, since I'm just speculating.

[Patricia]

Mine is still a young one, so I feed him a 20-30g mouse every 5 days, weighing often. On that 5-day schedule, his weight never (doesn't have time to) drops below what it was after consuming the last mouse. He poops once or twice a month, so when that finally comes out, his weight drops.

So, in a nutshell, in our young BP's case, most of the mouse goes towards body weight. And since he came to us as thin as an eel, I'm delighted that he's now the proper, rounded snake shape.

[trott]

Hard to know the exact amount but i believe hatch's and really young bps absorb more in a young state. Far less frquency of droppings at that age.

[Vypyrz]

I guess the easy thing would be to weigh all the prey and weigh all the poop...

[aarondm]

It would be hard to weigh the poop since there is a certain amount of liquid involved. Better probably to weigh the snake before eating and after defication.
I was just curious if there were any breeders out there who had been keeping any records and could give a general idea of how much adults absorb from each meal. Thanks for any input

[aarondm]

I'm going to start doing this with mine, This post was just out of curiosity