Maintainance feeding

[padiente]

Will someone please explain how this works for a BP and why it would be done? I think I may have been inadvertanly doing this all along, but I don't know. I have a fear of both underfeeding and over feeding my snake.

[Jeanne]

From how it was explained to me, that is when the snake is basically fed enough to keep it alive and decent looking. However , I could be wrong, but that is how ot was explained to me.

[Smulkin]

Why would you use it on a BP - concerned it might grow too large? It basically translates into giving the snake the minimal amt of nutrition is needs to maintain health.

[padiente]

Actually, I wasn't doing it intentionally, I just think that my feeding schedual translates to that, maybe. I didn't want to over feed him as I have heard a lot about obese snakes, and I also heard they live longer if they are fed less than weekly among otherthings.

[Ginevive]

Once a week for growing, younger BPs; once every 2 weeks for adults. I fed Goblin, my adult male, once a week and he began to look obese. Feed him once every 2, now, and he's great.

[Adam_Wysocki]

The following text was taken from the Husbandry page at www.milehighmorpsh.com ...

"Can you over-feed a Ball Python? Unfortunately there are popular myths that feeding frequent meals or as some people call it "power-feeding" is dangerous to your snake. We are fortunate to have Dr. Roger Klingenberg (co-author of "The Ball Python Manual") as our veterinarian and he has advised us that it nearly impossible to over-feed a juvenile Ball Python. The danger of obesity does not come into play until the snake is an adult and then only with excessive feeding."

Ball pythons are very good at self regulating their own food intake. Appropriately sized food items every 7 - 14 days is fine. More frequent feeding is fine too if they'll eat more often. Learn what works for your own snake and let him/her tell you how much and how often to feed it.

-adam

[padiente]

Ok, but I thought one of the dangers of power feeding was that the snake would mature very fast, shortenng it juvinal stage and hence, its life in the long run.

[sk8er4life]

thats what i thought too?

[Schlyne]

As far as I know that is the danger of power feeding. Snake grows very very quickly, but it can lead to problems later on. I've seen on some sites (probably that one) that "somebody has determined that is impossible to power feed a young bp". I'm not saying that the vet isn't credible. It's hard to say for sure.

I don't think stuffing a snake to "bursting" is healthy, do you? Personally, I think you can powerfeed a bp, and it's not healthy.

Feeding once a week is fine, however.

[Ginevive]

In reality, we grossly overfeed our captive snakes; I doubt that they would get to eat even once a month in the wild (could be wrong though.) I think that it's more possible that we can overfeed them, than to underfeed.
I think that even in young, growing snakes, overfeedng could be detrimental. The digestive tract of pythons has developed to digest one big meal at a time, not several smaller ones in a week. I know that also, with overfeeding, gas can build up in the digestive tract, in the spaces between the food items, and cause the snake to bloat. I saw an overfed BCI like that, and it is not pretty.