At what point do you stop?

[angllady2]

My experience with this ended up giving me a big headache.

I tried the 10-15% rule, since it seemed like everyone used it. At first everything went great, my snakes were eating everything I fed and growing like weeds. I was ticked of course, none of this "feeding strike" stuff with MY babies. I got smug.

Then around 400 grams, fully 90% of my babies stopped eating, all at roughly the same time. Males and females. Week after week went by, I wasted a LOT of F/T food. Then to make matters worse, my bigger snakes stopped eating as well. Now I started getting worried and upset. So back here I came seeking answers. And discovered something I never noticed before. The people who rarely had snakes go off food except for breeding didn't use the 15% rule. In fact, most of them fed smallish prey all the time. Huh, fancy that.

So, back to the drawing board and with much smaller prey. Guess what ? One by one they started eating again. I had one or two holdouts, but pretty much everyone showed me they preferred smaller meals to big ones. So now, everyone gets a smallish meal every 7 days, and everyone eats regularly. If someone is particularly hungry, they might get a second small prey item. My breeder's are the only exception, and everything I read tells me that's normal. My big girls seem to prefer every 14 days, and my males are hit and miss. My babies get one adult mouse or rat pup weekly, right up until they hit 250-300 grams. Sometimes one will get two as they reach the heavier end of that scale. From roughly 300-800 grams they get a weaned rat weekly. Over 800, they get a small rat weekly to every 14 days. Nobody gets bigger that a small. And we're all happy again.

Gale