feeding and growth

[royal_python09]

Hey guys i have a question. The guy that works at the petstore i go to said that u can feed a ball twice the same week if u want them to grow faster. Is thais right? I want my snake to grow big too but i want to do it the right way I always thought u just feed them once a week until they get bigger then u feed them every 2 weeks. I have a female by the way. We started talking about it because a girl came in with her ball stressed out because she was over feeding her.

[mpkeelee]

if u feed them too often i hear it can cause them to live a shorter time than they normally would. they will get bigger but they will be wide and not long. so u will have a fat snake. mine is about 2 1/2 months old and i feed him a small rat every 5 days.

[ssballow]

I feed every Friday and he is growing great. I would say to give them time to digest and absorb the nutrients. In July he was a hatchling eating fuzzies and now he is almost 500 grams eating small rats.

[seeya205]

I feed my 3 month old a rat pup every 5 days and he is huge and growing fast but not fat. Twice a week is powerfeeding in my opion and is not good for the health of the snake!

[royal_python09]

Ok cool. Yea because I didnt think that would be healthy for her. I think its time she moves up to small rats tho shes like a foot an 9 inches. how do i know wen to up the size of food?

[iCandiBallPythons]

I feed prey about the same size as the thickest part of the snakes body.

[Freakie_frog]

I feed all the hatchling every 5 days till they get to be 600-800 grams then I switch them to every 7 days. Once I start pairing a female I will switch her to every 5 days again. It seems that durning the first year of their life and durning breeding they need the increased food .

Think of it like this in the wild it's in these animals best interest to grow out of being easy "prey" size of other animals as quick as they can. I can lay hands on no less than 5 animals in my collection that I have done this way and they are doing just fine. I have several females that I fed every 5 days till they hit 1000+ grams and have not seen any adverse effects. In fact they recovered quicker from breeding than the others. They are now back to every 7 days..