General guideline is to feed prey items as big around as the thickest part of the snake.No and NoImo, I would just use the 15 - 20% rule for feeding. That is how they calculate food for a animal in zoo's.
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.
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