How do you feel about "maintenance diets"???

[SquamishSerpents]

Be honest people, how many breeders who hatch many ball pythons every season feed every single hatchling every 5 days? When you hatch a clutch, yes, of course you want to get them feeding as soon as possible. However once they've had 5 meals or so, you probably cut them back a little bit.

Now say you go out and purchase a super awesome multi-gene male who is the perfect match for one of your females that will be breeding next year. Face it, you will feed that super awesome multi-gene male more than you feed any of the hatchlings in your For Sale rack. I can assure you, that male you want to breed does not need to be fed as much as you are feeding him, but you're going to do it anyways because you want him to be big. I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing, as long as you're not overdoing it or stuffing 2nd rats in the snakes mouth as it swallows it's first rat. I think people greatly overestimate how much these snakes really need to eat. They only get fed so much because that has become standard, because people have these numbers in their heads about how old or how big a snake should be when it starts breeding. Which is the bottom line when most people are purchasing a snake. If you have 2 snakes, same quality, same price, but one is bigger, generally the bigger one will get bought first.

On the other hand, I viewed a snake at a show from a well-known, supposedly reputable breeder up here in BC and I asked how much she weighed. She was weighed for me, something around 200g. I didn't buy her then, but I saw her pop up on the website about 6 months after the show and struck my fancy yet again. When I asked for her current weight, I was emailed a picture of her weighing pretty much the exact same as she did at the show. To me, that's completely unacceptable. A snake should be growing, not losing weight or staying the same. But it doesn't NEED to be fed every 5 days, in my opinion. You just WANT to feed them every 5 days.

Bottom line: I'll admit it, I'm not going to feed the snakes that I have for sale as much I would feed one from my own collection. There are a couple of reasons for this:

We don't know when we're going to be showing the snakes to potential customers. We live in a very rural area (compared to the core of the reptile community in the Vancouver area) and it's often difficult to coordinate people coming up and viewing the babies with our schedule. Also, I don't transport babies unless the person is sure they are buying them and they are already paid for. I'm not taking any of our babies on a car ride for a little bit of show and tell. So I like to keep the snakes handle-able in case somebody wants to come and take a look.

I like to feed my For Sale babies a little bit less so that they are less reluctant to take food. So many people worry about the ball pythons not eating. Well, usually they WILL eat. If your husbandry is correct, they will eat when they want to. If they refuse a couple of times. DON'T PANIC, don't offer them food every day, that will only serve to stress them out and fear dinner time. If they refuse, give them 10-14 days. Let their tummies rumble. They usually go for it.

And lastly, so many people say they're not in it for the money, but let's face it. We all try to cut costs somewhere, weather it's couponing for the cheapest paper towel, asking the local newspaper for their end rolls, using toilet paper tubes as hides, etc. This is a hobby, and a VERY expensive one at that. Why should we pay to grow your snake up super fast so that you can breed it as soon as possible?

I figure as long as the snakes are healthy, plump, and gaining weight, there is no problem at all.

Some people might disagree with me, and that's okay. If that's the case I'd ask you to find one breeder who feeds their sale-able hatchlings every 5-7 days. I'm sure there are some out there, but I'm also fairly certain the majority do not.