BP's eat and grow more than we thought?

[satomi325]

I also wanted to add that some of my non-breeders and strict pet adult ball pythons eat every 10-14 days(but usually just 14 days) and still look great, have good body condition, and lovely muscle tone.

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[Kodieh]

Babies get an appropriate sized meal every three days until 500g here. At approximately this time, maybe a little sooner, they move up to small rats and go to a five day schedule.

When they break 1000g they go on a seven day. I haven't had to increase my days outside of that, because no snake in my possession has broken 1400g (1382g is my largest).

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[Neal]

Well said, Neal.

Thanks. I just hate seeing when people always recommend it for everything. I just want to grab them through the screen by the throat and backhand them.

When you start recommending that for colubrids and other stuff you'll start running into major issues. Also if the BP has been underfed for awhile and it has the weight but not the size. Just so many things go into play and it's frustrating when just you see everybody, oh 10-15%. A hatchling BP gets a rat fuzzy the first feeding, then 2 rat fuzzies if it will eat, then after that it's on rat pups. At high 300 grams(usually) they're on weaned rats. Then at 500 they go to small rats.

[Archimedes]

My bigger girl can and will gladly eat whenever I put a rodent in her tank (except she won't touch live, but I don't mind that!). Because of this, I do have to keep an eye on what I feed her when. She had a big meal week a few weeks ago, when my tiny baby girl kept refusing her meals, and, reluctant to waste a feeder, I handed them over to Nessie. She probably ate 3 tiny meals in a two week period, which kept her pretty full until a few nights ago, at which point she began roaming for a meal. Today I'm picking her up a proper sized meal for her to get her back on her normal weekly schedule.

There is ALWAYS such a thing as overfeeding, with any creature on this earth. It's our job as responsible keepers to make sure our animals don't come to unnecessary harm, and keeping them from obesity that can lead to major health issues is just one of those things. Am I saying an extra meal here and there is gonna kill em? No, not at all, and if they'll take it ,let em have it, because we all know that hunger strikes are common for these guys. But keeping meals in moderation and making sure it's a relatively sized prey for their mass is a really important part of what we do.

[MrLang]

I can bet many females in the wild are not breeding till they are 4+ years old, while some breeders try to breed their girls as soon as possible, which could be as young as a year old.

I was hoping this thread would present the opportunity for me to share a thought I had, then got pessimistic, then you brought my opportunity back!

So this is COMPLETE SPECULATION but it is based on pretty deep knowledge of biology and ecology:

I was thinking the other day that the famous 1,000g wall might have something to do with evolution. It's advantageous to stay smaller in a lot of cases. I can imagine females evolving to stay at a trim 1,000g where they can find food more easily, hide more easily, etc. until they are sexually mature. At that point they would be bulking up to breed. So just an interesting thought that maybe the 1,000g wall is created by feeding a snake up 'too fast' compared to the natural growth rate and the body isn't interested in breaching 1,000g until they're looking to bulk up for eggs.

[satomi325]

I was hoping this thread would present the opportunity for me to share a thought I had, then got pessimistic, then you brought my opportunity back!

So this is COMPLETE SPECULATION but it is based on pretty deep knowledge of biology and ecology:

I was thinking the other day that the famous 1,000g wall might have something to do with evolution. It's advantageous to stay smaller in a lot of cases. I can imagine females evolving to stay at a trim 1,000g where they can find food more easily, hide more easily, etc. until they are sexually mature. At that point they would be bulking up to breed. So just an interesting thought that maybe the 1,000g wall is created by feeding a snake up 'too fast' compared to the natural growth rate and the body isn't interested in breaching 1,000g until they're looking to bulk up for eggs.

Interesting thought. I do see some logic in it.

Even with regular full meals, some girls take 2-3 years to get to breeding size. So I can't imagine the ones in the wild are growing at the same rate.

I admit that I did try to bulk up one of my first female hatchlings quickly in the past. She was really an aggressive eater and ate every 5 days and did hit 1200g by her first year. I did try to breed her a few months later. She did gain another 800g within those months of breeding. But in the end, she never ovulated. I believe it was a combo of age, sexual maturity, and being way too fat.

Ever since, I stopped caring on trying to race my girls to breeding size and maturity. They get there when they get there. And ultimately, I want healthy animals way more than a clutch of eggs.
Slow and steady wins the race.

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[coldbloodaddict]

I have noticed by not feeding them like crazy I have less girls that hit the 1000 gram mark and stop eating!

I count on most girls taking 3 years to reach breeding...Some genetically grow faster and may go sooner though...

Balls only started getting fed every other day so you could get your "investment" breeding ASAP to make the big bucks before the next guy...

[ViperSRT3g]

I'd say the caretaker of the snake is just as responsible for a snake getting overweight or other such possible issues. It's your responsibility to know the behavior of your snake. If you are a breeder, and simply have too many, it's understandable to feed your snakes on a regular schedule. But if you only have a handful that you can dedicate a more substantial time to each individual snake, you had better understand its behavior and personality. You better know when it's getting hungry so that you can feed it. If it's hungry, then just feed it. Granted, you don't have to feed it a giant meal, but a little of something is much better than a whole lot of nothing. Especially if the snake is taking food readily and doesn't need to be force fed.

I'm by no means an experienced snake person. I've only had my snake for a few months now. But we seem to have established a nice pattern of behavior with each other. If I notice my snake getting hungry, (roaming around hunting for food) he'll get a decent sized meal. The size of the meal is based on the size of him, if it can comfortably fit within him based on how large he is, then he gets it. Since our snakes are essentially domesticated, they don't have to worry about running out of food. Therefore, they can survive just fine on smaller sized prey, as long as they are fed regularly, like when they show signs of being hungry. They don't have to worry about trying to save it for later and get as large of a meal as they can possibly get, or eat as much as they can possibly cram down their throats. That's why I only feed him prey sized by his body.

[bcr229]

I'd say the caretaker of the snake is just as responsible for a snake getting overweight or other such possible issues. It's your responsibility to know the behavior of your snake. If you are a breeder, and simply have too many, it's understandable to feed your snakes on a regular schedule. But if you only have a handful that you can dedicate a more substantial time to each individual snake, you had better understand its behavior and personality. You better know when it's getting hungry so that you can feed it. If it's hungry, then just feed it. Granted, you don't have to feed it a giant meal, but a little of something is much better than a whole lot of nothing. Especially if the snake is taking food readily and doesn't need to be force fed.

With a BP that goes through regular hunger strikes this type of feeding regimen probably won't be a problem. OTOH my BCI's will eat at every opportunity. They would be morbidly obese in no time if they were fed every time I observed them "hunting". Even if it's not their feeding day but I'm thawing rodents because another snake needs to eat, I can guarantee that they will all be up at the front of their enclosures waiting for a rat to arrive.

[Badgemash]

I want to make a point that I think has been missed on this topic, our BPs are not in the wild. Observations on what they do in the wild are a great (because you definitely need a baseline), but observing what happens in captivity, the environment we care about in this situation is more useful. For the most part, our animals are not fending off parasites and predators, they expend very little energy finding food, and have the ultimate in climate control. Their growth rates and metabolic demands are probably rather different in captivity than they are in the wild, so it is important to look at trends of snakes in captivity*.

*I apologize for this incomplete chain of thought, I was thinking about experiences I've had with american mustangs (yes I know that snakes are not horses or mammals). When you take a pregnant mare or a weanling into captivity, and raise the baby in the same environment as 'regular' horses, they tend to grow MUCH bigger (we had a 16 hand foal out of a 14 hand mare for example). They also tend to get obese readily, probably because they have an evolved genetic tendency toward storing calories efficiently from centuries of living on comparatively poor fodder. Hopefully someone gets where I was going with this line of contemplation, because I lost track of my thought and got distracted thinking about lunch, sorry.