Keeping your BPs at a certain size

[muddoc]

They say if he gets too big he won't breed as well. Idk if it's true, but it seems kinda cruel to intentionally starve an animal that would naturally continue to grow it's entire life enough to stop that growth.

I thought I would post our experience and interpretation on this subject. I am one of those that will put my males on a maintenance diet after they reach about 900 grams. I am one that falls in the group that likes to keep my males in the 800 - 1000 gram range. With that said, I feed my adult males every three weeks. If they get over 1000 grams, I do not adjust their diet to get them back down, I just continue to feed every three weeks. With that said, I have a Spider and Albino male that are 5 and 6 years old respectively. The Spider is about 700 grams and the Albino is about 1400 grams. They are offered food like everyone else, but they only eat about 4 rats per year.

I quote steve above, because I don't see how this can be considered cruel. I do not mean that if someone intentially "starves" (read as offers food 2 or 3 times a year) that it is not cruel. However, we feed ours a "maintenance" diet, and they seem to thrive and do a great job during breeding season. In the wild, there is no owner there dropping a rodent in the snake den every 7 days. They may go a month or more without a meal, and seem to thrive just fine. Many adult animals brought in from the wild do not look anywhere near as full and robust as a captive animal. They definitely look more "lean" and sometimes downright skinny.

To each his own, but I thought I would share how we do it,