Would you purchase from a breeder who advocates power feeding?

[wilomn]

So no one else would consider a breeder a scumbag when they put the health of the animal last. Even if there is no proof as of now, If your power feeding when you believe it shortens the lifespan of the animal, why do it? This breeder said it himself. He'd rather a female breed earlier than it live to 20 years. To him, the animals are disposable. And to me thats a scumbag.

Business is business. If you breed snakes as your business then you need to get them breeding.

Pets are a different matter. I'm pretty sure cows and goats and ducks and chickens live longer on their own than the ones who are born into the "food" lines that those scumbags out there are breeding so folks can eat.

It may not be NICE, but making baby snakes as soon as you can, if that's what you're doing to make a living, is part of the business.

[redstormlax12]

IF they are doing this as a living, dont they want the highest efficiency of the snakes? So overweight or obese males and females do not breed well, correct? Also shaving a year off of waiting for breeding size could very well shave 2 or 3 years off of its breeding life span. So wouldnt that be counterintuitive? That wouldn't be very efficient for business.

I dont believe powerfeeding your snakes is part of the business at all. Most breeders wont powerfeed because though they are making a living, they still care for their animals.

[redstormlax12]

Calling someone feeding hatchlings every 4 days a scumbag is a bit of a stretch. I feed every 4-5 days. Hatchlings in Africa are hardwired to eat as much as possible as frequently as possible to become less of a prey item to predators. They hatch after the rainy season when prey items are abundant

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The breeder that this thread started about was feeding the hatchlings upwards of %50 of their body weight every three days. I find that excessive.

[greghall]

so your talking about force feeding I think they would regurge what they couldnt handle,like I said before I think under feeding & stunting is more of a issue because bottom line ,feeders cost money ,less money into snake means more profit.

[Seru1]

I give my hatchling spider a hopper every 3 days as an FYI. I'll slow that maybe in a month or two when I move to rats to 5 days but for now I just want him to eat, grow, and be healthy.

[Beardedragon]

so your talking about force feeding I think they would regurge what they couldnt handle,like I said before I think under feeding & stunting is more of a issue because bottom line ,feeders cost money ,less money into snake means more profit.

It is force feeding, but normaly you use that term when you are trying to force a NON eating snake ( Like a hatchling who hasnt started yet) to eat.

[WingedWolfPsion]

I went with 'depends'.

It depends MOST on your definition of power-feeding. The OP's description does not constitute power-feeding at all in my opinion. It's simply frequent feeding. Power-feeding involves introducing another food item on the tail of the first one, to cause the snake to consume more food than it actually wants to.

The second 'depends' is the species. As someone pointed out, boas that are overfed do poorly. Some subspecies of boas are even more prone to problems than others when they are fed too much and too frequently as hatchlings.

Ball pythons do not appear to be prone to these issues. Of course adult ball pythons can become obese--when they are obese, they breed poorly. Females slug out often, and males are lazy. You don't want to put too much weight on an adult ball python.

However, there is no evidence I have seen that feeding YOUNG ball pythons as much as they care to eat does anything more than cause them to grow extremely quickly--all of them, including their head (no pinhead syndrome). Some young snakes have even made it to 1500 grams in their very first year, and they look normal.

It is an evolutionary advantage for a young snake to be able to take advantage of a plentiful food supply when there IS plenty of food, when it comes to a harsh environment like the African savannah. The faster a ball python can grow up, the less vulnerable it will be to predators. That size also provides a tremendous buffer against hard times--that 1500 gram yearling could go on to survive for a year without food if it had to.

Since these snakes appear to be growing very fast, and their growth is proportional, there is no reason to think that this is bad for the health. They also do not appear to be obese (there are signs you can look for that indicate that, such as visible skin between scales).

There is 0 evidence, even anecdotal, to suggest that ball pythons that have been fed heavily in their first 3 years of live will live shorter lives.

Logically, the result of all that feeding will be that their final adult size will be considerably larger than that of snakes that were fed more sparingly. Think about it--they will continue to grow FAST until they are around 3 years old. Around that point, their growth rate slows dramatically, and they continue to grow very slowly over the course of the rest of their life. The larger they are when they reach about 3 years old, the bigger they'll be in the end.

Now, a lot of a ball python's size is going to be genetic, we can see that some animals naturally grow much larger and much faster than others--but if you want an individual to reach its full potential for size, you have to get that growth in while it is young.

I don't want a 'slow-grown' female. She's going to be small. She's ALWAYS going to be small. Small females lay small clutches. Even if large females can sometimes lay small clutches as well, it's a simple fact--no 1500 gram female is going to lay 13 eggs for you.

Ball pythons are highly adaptable animals--a smaller body size will allow them to survive better in areas where food is scarce. Smaller clutches will also give hatchlings less competition for scarce food. It all works out for the ball pythons in the wild.

Now, I could be wrong in my conclusions, above...but I haven't seen any sign of it so far.

As for my own snakes--hatchlings start eating every 2 to 3 days for their first meals, then they move to feedings every 4 days for my holdbacks, and every 5 days for the animals for sale. I keep them on that schedule for as long as they will tolerate it. When they begin refusing meals, they are moved to a 7 day schedule.
I also put post-breeding females on a 5 days schedule to put their weight back on quickly after they lay, then they're moved to maintenance feeding through the breeding season. It appears to be working exceptionally well.

Ball pythons will eat an amount comfortable for them to process, if you give them the choice. That isn't power-feeding.