My ball python is hardly gaining weight

[hevvia]

I have a young healthy female ball python that seems to be having issues with gaining weight - at least in comparison to my other two ball pythons. She hatched early May 2017 and I got her in late August 2017 at 103g, and yesterday when I weighed her she was only 129g. She took a whole month before she decided to eat for me after bringing her home, and that dropped her to 94g at the lowest, so it's been a pretty slow climb. I feed her every 5 days with one mouse fuzzy, and after that first month, she's always ready to eat with a very quick feeding response.

She's not skinny. I'm not worried about her being starved, I'm just wondering why she's gaining weight at such a slow rate. I really don't want to feed her less than every 5 days and power feed her if I don't need to for the time being. Since she's not thin, should this be something I shouldn't be concerned about?

I'm relatively new to snake keeping and seeing her progress so slowly compared to my other two is really starting to worry me. But if it's nothing to worry about and it just means she'll be a small lady as an adult, I'll be happy.

[Momokahn]

Your snake at the weight you describe should be able to handle adult mice quite well. If you have access to rats of similar size to an adult mouse that would be actually better. Feeding a single rat compared to several mice when your ball python gets bigger makes life a lot easier and cheaper too.

[cchardwick]

Adult mice? I'm not too sure about that. My retired breder mice are 50 grams, at that snake weight 10% would be a 12 gram rodent. I'd feed every 4 days until you get up to a few hundred grams, and monitor the snake weight and increase the rodent size as it grows. Taking a month off at hatchling weight slowed it down for sure.

[Craiga 01453]

[/QUOTE]A mouse fuzzy is too small of a meal, even for a hatchling. This chart should help.





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[elleon]

I weigh my snake every week if I can to keep tabs on his growth. I also weigh his food so I know how much he's eating. Shoot for 10-15% of the snake's body weight for each meal, at least when they're young and growing. Once I was able to get his feeders in this range, my little guy just took off with his weight. It seemed like switching to rats helped too, but I can't isolate that as a variable.

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[Stewart_Reptiles]

I feed her every 5 days with one mouse fuzzy

You can't expect a BP which at that age is voracious to gain weight on this type of prey, I have never fed a fuzzy to a BP, they get started on hopper and quickly move to adult.

Once you feed your BP an appropriate size prey your animal will put on weight.