4 years old, but only 1200 grams?

[Miko]

My ball python, Lucy, is 4 years old, but only a little over 1200 grams. I feed her every seven days, but she seems a bit on the small side. I feed her F/T medium rats, and I've been trying to get her up to breeding weight! I'm really excited to breed Lucy, but she's a little too small in my opinion.
Should I feed her every 5 days? Should I maybe buy a different scale since I'm using a kitchen scale? Should I increase the size of her rats?
Let me know what you think an ideal weight to breed her would be, and how you think I can help her gain some weight.

[bcr229]

How much do these "medium" rats weigh?

[Stewart_Reptiles]

She is fine breeding is a combination of weight and age and overall look.

Chances are she is one of those female that will remain smaller not all females get 2500 grams and over some remains in the 1500/1600 grams.

If she looks good in other words well proportionate I would not hesitate to breed her even at 1200 grams now it does not mean I would breed a 18 months old at that weight but since she is 4 I would.

Do not increase the rat size smaller preys are overall better if you feed to large she might only eat every other week or less making the total monthly food intake lesser than by feeding smaller prey weekly.

[Miko]

The rodents are from big cheese rodents, and I keep saying medium, but I meant small sorry! They're 50 - 89 grams. Should I feed her medium rats?

[Lizardlicks]

General guideline is to feed prey items as big around as the thickest part of the snake. You should see a nice lump when the snake is done eating. If she looks like she could handle bigger then you can try that, or, like Deb suggested, feed the same size but offer more often.

[PitOnTheProwl]

How often are you getting poo.
The less she goes the more you can get away with feeding.
If she goes right after feedings you are over doing it and the rats are going to waste.

[Albert Clark]

The rodents are from big cheese rodents, and I keep saying medium, but I meant small sorry! They're 50 - 89 grams. Should I feed her medium rats?

Imo, I would just use the 15 - 20% rule for feeding. That is how they calculate food for a animal in zoo's. It's pretty specific using the animals weight. And there is room for adjustments up and down. She weighs 1200 gms she should be fed a total 240 gms at a feeding at the high of 20%. The low would e 140 gms at 15% of 1200. 240 gms of food at 20% or 180 gms at 15% GOOD LUCK!!!

[Stewart_Reptiles]

General guideline is to feed prey items as big around as the thickest part of the snake.

Imo, I would just use the 15 - 20% rule for feeding. That is how they calculate food for a animal in zoo's.

No and No

Going by those so called guidelines and 4000 grams animals would need a prey equal 400 grams or more which would be WAY too much.

While this so called guideline works well for hatchling and juvies people seem to forget that adult's metabolism drastically slows down and based on the activity level, combining HUGE meal plus low activity will result in an animal that will be sluggish for days and prone to fast, not to mentioned that the animal will eat one week and skip 3.

While I have tested my theories with LARGE preys I feed smaller preys, I actually never feed anything larger than 150 grams rat and that's to 3000 grams animals and over.

At 1200 grams they get anything between 75 to 85 grams of food.

Also not to mention that when fed live the bigger the prey the bigger the threat, the key in safe live feeding is not to feed oversized prey.

Zoos are very OLD school and I known some breeders are still old school too but because an animal can take down a large prey does not mean it needs to or should.

[Miko]

She poops about once a week or so.

[bcr229]

She poops about once a week or so.

It sounds like she's fine. Since she's taking f/t anyway, get both small and medium rats, weigh them out, and try to feed the "larger smalls" and "smaller mediums", assuming you have critters that will be eating what she doesn't... and if you don't, well that's just an excuse to buy more snakes.