"Power feeding" BG's perspective.

[rabernet]

It's interesting Neil - Tim Bailey and I have discussed this same thing in the past - about bush babies coming in much larger than the CH that were shipped even before their first sheds, and the fact that ball pythons are opportunistic feeders, and its in babies' best interests to eat as much as they can as quickly as they can to grow and become less of a chance of becoming prey themselves.

Wow - that's a run on sentence isn't it? LOL

As a result of those conversations, I do feed my babies every 4 to 5 days and feed them on that schedule until they start to consistently refuse on that schedule. Only then do I move them to about a once a week schedule. But if I see an older animal looking like they may be looking for food before 7 days, I do offer them food.

That's what I like about learning from others - it opens your mind to think outside the box.

There are certainly tried and true "guidelines" that we like to recommend to a new keeper, because we know that they work. But for someone who has some experience under their belt (and each person will have to define "experience" for themselves, I'm not going to), there's nothing wrong with thinking outside the box.

When I got my first ball python, I was very black and white with my "rules". Temps had to be X and humidity had to be X - no flexibility in that. Then I read VPI's book and Kevin McCurley's book, and talked to other breeders - and guess what? They all did things a little differently, and they all had healthy animals. Some kept their animals much cooler than I would have at the time, and others bred smaller than I would have, etc. It really made me stop and think and start to be more flexible in my thinking and start learning to read my animals. I stopped freaking out if the cool side of my enclosure dipped into the mid to upper 70's if there was still an appropriate basking spot available on the warm side. Did you know that the Barkers have a whole building of females that cool into the upper 60's in the winter? Learned that from reading their book. And I learned from my own experience that when the cool side of my enclosure dipped into the mid to upper 70's, nothing bad happened, no RI's, etc - as long as there was an appropriate basking area.

So - I like posts like this, that get people to think outside their comfort zone. There are many ways to successfully keep ball pythons. One way isn't necessarily THE way. I'll repeat what I said above, this forum does tend to offer a "set" way to keep ball pythons, which I think is fine for a new keeper - they need to get the basics down. Once the basics are mastered, there's no reason why they can't start to change things up and see what works best for them!