Feeding timeline, when to move up?

[kiiarah]

Oh man, the last thing I need is to encouragement to get another lol. I figure it is inevitable but I am trying not to go too crazy too fast. I so envy anyone lucky enough to have the time and resources to breed or keep a large variety of snakes. I will have to get a clearer picture of him soon. Maybe what I am really lacking is experience in telling if a bp is underweight or not. He is not "triangular" but at the same time I can feel his spine. Not sure if this is normal or not. He doesn't seem to have excessive skin folding though sometimes I notice his skin will sort of grab my arm so it isn't like he is so plump that there is no give. From my reading it seems that it is normal, especially in young snakes, for there to be a bit looser skin than in adults. I will sure feel better when that scale gets here though. That is really my biggest concern, that I will overlook signs of a problem simply due to lack of experience.

[OodlesOfNoodles]

Oh man, the last thing I need is to encouragement to get another lol. I figure it is inevitable but I am trying not to go too crazy too fast. I so envy anyone lucky enough to have the time and resources to breed or keep a large variety of snakes. I will have to get a clearer picture of him soon. Maybe what I am really lacking is experience in telling if a bp is underweight or not. He is not "triangular" but at the same time I can feel his spine. Not sure if this is normal or not. He doesn't seem to have excessive skin folding though sometimes I notice his skin will sort of grab my arm so it isn't like he is so plump that there is no give. From my reading it seems that it is normal, especially in young snakes, for there to be a bit looser skin than in adults. I will sure feel better when that scale gets here though. That is really my biggest concern, that I will overlook signs of a problem simply due to lack of experience.

I really wouldn't worry. In time it will become second nature and you'll know what's what and what works for you and your snakes and whether something is wrong or not.

I also wouldn't worry about the food size. Even as an adult my big male enjoyed cleaning up the occasional rat pups if any were going spare from my younger snakes...

[BrandyL1193]

I still had fuzzies left over and just fed two at a time to make the weight ratio right. We went quickly from fuzzies to smalll rats. I probably had him 5 months. Last order I made....I bought weanlings and small rats. Already on second bag of smalls.

[scalrtn]

I also recently ordered from Big Cheese. My snake, now at around 280 grams, was taking a rat fuzzy every 5 days. When those became too small, I switched him over to large mice via a local pet store. I then got 25 pups and 20 weanlings from BC. (note: you'll get better shipping prices in the fall-winter months when snakes are known to go off feed - or so I'm told). The pups are about 28-30g each, which is slightly larger than the large mice he was getting (which averaged 23-25 g). He's doing great on the Pups (5 gone so far), and gets 1 every 7 days. When he's bigger, I plan to lower the feeding frequency to 5 days so he more or less gets 2 per week. Then I'll bump him up to the weanlings, which are still vacuum-sealed. This is a lot better than making trips to the hit-or miss pet store, where feeders were sometimes sick or unavailable. More cost-effective over time as well.

[kiiarah]

Ok got the digital scale in. He weighs 92 grams, I have photos of him on the other post I made about a possible impending shed, but since I am at work cannot upload them here until later. Any thoughts.

[scalrtn]

I fed my snake rat fuzzies every 4 days till he was around 230 grams. The fuzzies were about 13 grams each. The rat pups I got from BC are around 30g each. To give you an idea of weight gain (at least from my experience), you can expect an increase in the snake's weight of around 35-60g a month with the 10-15% per week feeder rule. When I started measurements in mid April 2014, he was at 141g. He's at 295g as of this morning. He's been getting a rat pup weekly for the past month, when he weighed 240g at the start. I'll be moving him to a 4-5 day feeding interval of pups this week.