feeding PROBLEMS

[NEAR775]

so my snakes doin great now that i got the environment set up right thanks to everyone who helped me with that............................ she also started to eat more but my question is there a way that u could overfeed ur snake cause i just feed her on tuesday and she ate again today so just thought id ask to get all the facts on ball pythons

[mues155]

Yes you can overfeed a snake.
There are rules of thumbs on this. Being there are always acceptions but this is what I do.
For a healthy feeding schedule you can feed every week or twice a week. (and you dont have to stick to this all the time you can get lazy one week and it will be just fine)

If you dont already you need to invest in a digital gram scale (walmart food section $20-30) take the weight of your BP and figure out 10% of that weight. That is the weight of the prey you should be offering once a week. That is an appropriate sized meal. If you want to feed twice a week I would just go with a slightly smaller prey item (maybe a few grams lighter)
And again is just a rule or thumb but its just what I follow! good luck!

[benwallage9]

feeding every two days like you did is considered power feeding. You aren't power feeding cuz you just did it once, but if you continue to feed like that it will be. Power feeding is bad for your snake as they aren't able to digest food that fast. It will greatly decrease your snakes life expectancy, sometimes even cutting it in half. It is also strong frowned upon in the reptile community cuz the main reason people do it is to increase the size of there snake quickly in order to breed it sooner then it should.

If your snake is a baby it can take two meals a week as it matures you should switch this to once a week. babies digest faster then adults. Also make sure the meals are slightly smaller if you choose to feed twice a week, you can do bigger if you feed once a week. Snakebytes (bhb reptiles) actually did an experiment on whats the best way to feed your snakes and it turns out bigger meals once a week makes them grow faster then smaller meals twice a week. Whatever you decide to do good luck and congrats on the new snake

[Daybreaker]

For babies/juvies I do a 5 day schedule, my big girls are on a week, and adult males are fine on a 10-14 day. This is what I personally go by. I also go by the 10-15% rule too. If your little one is hungry then I say go for a 5 day and get her on rats if possible so you won't have a hard time transitioning her when she's older (ie I've never had problems transitioning snakes from mice to rats but some people have). Good luck.