New ball python over a year old and only 166 grams!

[bcr229]

Is there a benefit of every two weeks? I mean on my pocket book there is an obvious benefit but should every owner of a mature ball python migrate to a 2 week cycle instead of weekly? It would not harm him I know but I never really gave it much thought until I started seeing more and more adult owners switching to 2 weeks schedules. Or, is this just one of the many rules that spread around the community over the years as gospel truth and has no basis in scientific fact?

I feed my non-breeding adult females every two weeks, and my non-breeding adult males every three weeks. This basically matches the schedule that they put themselves on when every snake used to be offered a rat weekly. After reading about FLD I decided that I wasn't doing them any favors by overfeeding, and the vast majority of snakes are overfed in captivity anyway. Some people would call this "maintenance feeding" since the snakes aren't really growing at a fast rate any more.

FWIW to get back to the breeders I know of with the tiny babies, "maintenance feeding" meant "just enough to keep them alive". It's done strictly to save money, not to prevent health issues due to overfeeding.