Keeping males small, feeding schedule/prey size?

[Jon14]

As others have said, males will be fine on small rats, and should not put on too much weight by following this guidance. I do not own any males, so I'm just going with what I have heard/read.

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[Stewart_Reptiles]

I know some breeders keeping males in those ranges of weight and to be honest a male can do as good at 1500 grams or more, what matters is that we are talking about a lean 1500 grams versus a fat 1500 grams and that has to do with proportions.

My males do not get anything more than small rats once a week (55 to 75 grams depending on the male), I also skip a week here and there. But it is a normal feeding regimen.

I have males well over the 1000 grams mark and they are some of my best breeders, again it's about proportion and looks, even a 750 grams male can be too fat to breed.

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[butterballpython]

New to ball pythons here, but I can't imagine dieting any animal to keep it within a certain weight range unless the dieting is done because it's overweight. I've heard of people doing this with small dogs to keep them smaller, but that seems cruel to me.

[Slim]

Are you serious? That shouldn't even be a question..

Yes. It was a serious question. I've been around here for a minute or two....I've seen a lot of crazy crap. So apologies if I offended you, but I've learned to be a skeptic.

[SwedishBalls]

Yes. It was a serious question. I've been around here for a minute or two....I've seen a lot of crazy crap. So apologies if I offended you, but I've learned to be a skeptic.

I'm pretty new to this particular site, but i've been keeping reptiles for about 7 years, so in some ways i can understand, i've seen my fare share of.. Well. But.. Believe me, i'm talking about a healty weight.. Not in any means underfeeding, or keeping them on a just plain wrong weight for they're size. If they're unhealthy at weight X, they're going up or down, depending on the specific animal. Not in any ways is my animals going to be mistreated

[Eric Alan]

Jumping in with a related question: at what size / weight do you move up from small to medium? My snake is a little over 850 grams, eating smalls and the body width or circumference looks like it's big enough for mediums but the head seems too small and I don't want to freak it out by jumping from 80 gram f/t rat to 100+ grams.
Thanks in advance, Eric.

My general rule of thumb is somewhere between 1000-1200 grams for females. It's pretty snake specific though depending on how they react to the larger prey.