Do snakes overeat?

[MontyAndMelissa]

He isn't overweight. He's been having two mice every two weeks for the last 7 months. From what ive heard, and the way he's acting, I feel I've been UNDER feeding him if anything (which makes me feel completely negligent). He is acting as if he hasn't eaten in weeks (I keep a very strict schedule).

[Sauzo]

If he is regurgitating, it might be too many mice or too big of an item or the cage is too cold. I've feed my 8 week old baby BP a 28 gram rat and she weighed 138 grams at the time. It looked like she ate a football and she pretty much went into a food coma on the spot and slowly slithered into her warm hide. She got it down and didn't regurgitate luckily but regurgitating for a snake is a very uncomfortable ordeal so I would wait a week before you feed again so the snake has time to replenish his stomach acids.

You're better off starting with a smaller meal and watching how he acts, does he go into hunt mode in 2 days or 1 week etc. Then you can adjust the size based on that as snakes tend to not like to expend energy unless needed so if he is out hunting and looking for food at night, it probably means hes hungry

[Sauzo]

Yeah if he is 2200 grams or around there, 2 adult mice every 2 weeks is underfeeding. That's ok though, just up it slowly till you find the happy size. Easier to correct underfeeding than overfeeding. My red tail boa lived luxury and was feed every week on medium rats. She is now pretty fat and now I gotta do tough love and like I said, cut her down to 1 medium rat every 2 weeks or when she takes a poop and is empty for a few days so I can slowly get her to lose weight. Its harder as with no food, any animals body goes into conservation mode and starts to hoard every calorie since it thinks its starving and thus losing weight is even harder. And its even harder as she is a lap snake who loves to have her head and body rubbed and come out and sit on me while I do stuff around the house or go outside so I feel bad cutting down her food

[MontyAndMelissa]

He only ever regurgitated when I put him in a feeder box. So just once. Never since then. For a few days he was very active, and defensive. Then I fed him, he went into his hide and was still aggressive. Fed him again and still seemed to be acting off. So I fed a f/t and he ate that, and still hasn't regurgitated. So I don't think I overfed him. My concern is he will never go back to his docile self.

[Sauzo]

He will probably become docile again. Just give him time because like I said, regurgitating for a snake is primarily a defensive move and is very stressful and hard on the snake. So he might still be upset from it. I would slowly just work with him to get him to trust you. And also as you learned, feeding outside the cage isn't the best idea. I mean it was old school thought and mostly applied to big snakes with really strong feeding responses like burms and retics and big boas like suris, Peruvians or large Colombian girls. But its been pretty much debunked as trying to move a snake that big after it fed can be dangerous as they can stay in feed mode for hours. As long as you handle your snake or open the cage for something other than feeding, they wont get conditioned to think anytime the cage is opened, food will be put in. I've feed my 5ft+ red tail boa in her cage forever but like I said, I take her out regularly so the only time she goes into feed mode is when she can actually smell a rat.

[MontyAndMelissa]

He regurgitated 7 months ago when I got him. Not recently.

[Sauzo]

Oh, well that's different then. Well in that case, you might have to do tough love and just pick him up regardless. Maybe he has learned that if he puffs up or strikes or whatever he does, it will make you leave him alone so that gets conditioned into them and they do that whenever you try and pick them up. That's why when babies try to bite, hiss or strike, you just suck it up and keep picking them up so they learn that stuff like that wont work. With a big boy like yours, you might need to wear gloves til you can break him of that habit or suck it up and go bare hand After a while he will probably learn it doesn't work anymore and that in fact you wont hurt him and he will mellow out.

[MontyAndMelissa]

Good idea. I don't know where he got that idea from. The fish must be whispering secrets to him at night or something. I haven't had this issue in the 7months I've had him

[Viol8r]

He isn't overweight. He's been having two mice every two weeks for the last 7 months. From what ive heard, and the way he's acting, I feel I've been UNDER feeding him if anything (which makes me feel completely negligent). He is acting as if he hasn't eaten in weeks (I keep a very strict schedule).

He will probably calm down when he isn't hungry anymore... My 600-1200 gram bp's eat small rats once a week.

[Reinz]

I would if our kitchen scale wasn't MIA. (I have no idea how things like that go missing, but they do).!

Must have females living in that house.

(I'm not being rude. It's just that in my house, things stopped going MIA once the females left.)