Feeding schedule for 100g snakes

[Foolish1]

I have been doing every 6 days for 3 weeks now. Thinking of switching to every 3 days. They are eating fine and seem explorative a day before I'd want them to be, meaning I feel like they are looking for food. In 2 weeks average weight gain would be around 18g. Lowest is 10g and highest is like 45g or something crazy. So thoughts?

These are there numbers from 2 weeks apart. 2 days after feeding whether they pooped or not.

[Eric Alan]

A few thoughts:

• For hatchlings, it's not unusual at all to see 100 gram gains per month - your 45 gram weight gain in 2 weeks is actually not crazy at all
• Your statement of "whether they pooped or not" will give you somewhat misleading data; "empty" (after pooping, before feeding) weights will give you a much better idea of their actual weight gain
• I would definitely increase feeding to at least every 4th day; snakes that are growing quickly will benefit from increased frequency of meals (and every 4th day is the generally accepted method until they are eating small rats - then they get switched to weekly meals)
• You also didn't say what size meal they're actually eating; since you have a scale, you can go one of two ways - either feed a meal 10-15% of the snake's empty weight, or eyeball it and feed a meal equivalent to the widest part of the snake's body; personally, until I was confident in my eyeballing skills, I weighed every single meal for my snakes (and truthfully, even though I'm a good "eyeballer" now, I still weigh every rat for my own OCD records)

I hope this helps!

[Foolish1]

Thanks a bunch. Getting dressed and going to go drive 3 hours for feeders. I can't take out of my colony of mice yet. Need to build more. Appreciate the response it helps a lot.

[PitOnTheProwl]

I do 3 or 4 days.

[Foolish1]

Appreciate the responses. They all ate today. Grabbed mice that were maybe 2cm smaller than usual. Thinking I will do every 3 to 4 days like Pit said. Depending on digestion and pooping I will augment feeding size.

My female lesser enchi actually struck it without needing to be hidden and waiting 2 hours. I am happy she is getting her feeding drive back. She was so picky the last 3 weeks. Didn't want to eat in public and would only accept small prey after 2 hours. Today she smashed a larger size than her last feeding. Proud of her. Patrick Swayze my Mojave ghost was the only one who was shy. He needed a newspaper covering his tub for a half hour to eat.

All in all feeding went great. I knew I needed to feed more frequently. But I didn't want to stress them. This was the first time I had animals shipped. Before it was all hand to hand transactions.

[Sauzo]

I feed my little 8 week old 138 gram girl every 3 days with a rat fuzzy/pup that weighs about 25 grams. It's a little more than 15% but she is a machine and pretty much instantly pops out of her hide and grabs them within a couple of mins of being in the cage.

[Foolish1]

Okay. I need to get more breeding pairs of rats it seems. Mice were just what I have always used. I can get a few colonies setup on Thursday so. Appreciate the response. I will see what my next meals weigh for sure.

[Sauzo]

My advice is switch to rats asap. You don't want to have to feed mice as you will go broke trying to feed all those snakes 4-5 mice each per feeding. I switched Dot over to the rat fuzzies/pups the instant I got her mostly for the reason I stated. Also my red tail eats rats so it just makes it easier for me as I just need to buy one type of rodent vs 1 rat and 4 or 5 mice and carry all these boxes around.

[Viol8r]

...and rats won't eat each other on the way home like mice will. Last week I came home with 1 & 1/2 mice to feed to corn snakes... luckily one of my smaller bp's was in shed and wasn't interested in the rat pup, so my corns all ate bigger meals.

[Foolish1]

Will call the company in the morning I ordered 5 colonies. Will just get all rats.