hooray for weigh day!

[dakski]

keep in mind that Corny is over 5 years old and well over 4ft long. he's not a young growing snake; his growth has been stunted for over 4 years from being fed only fuzzies. he should weigh 500g at his age and length (says the internet but i know that's not 100% true).

i'm not against going to the vet, but i doubt parasites are involved at this point (but I'm an idiot so if any of this is screaming PARASITES then please say so).

the large mice i was offering where ~25g on their BEST day, meaning they were almost always smaller than that (probs closer to 20g). i offered 1 large mouse (~25g) every 7 days from feb to the end of march.

i only started feeding 2 large mice at the end of march, when i realized he hadn't shed out in a while even after i moved him to the large mice (i did not get a weight during this time). it was like once he hit 300g that 1 large mouse just wasn't enough. this was when i panicked and started trying to give him rats bc he was pacing so much and i'm an idiot and i haven't found appropriate sized mice near me.

here's my logs:




so no more rats. period. there is no fast-tracking this. ugh. with the size of mice i can get now (20-25g), can i feed him multiple times a week? should i just place my order of ex breeder mice now and not mess with the pet stores?

i feel like a failure. i was supposed to take him in to a better home and i'm messing this up left and right. this isn't fair to him.

@mods i would appreciate it if this convo was moved to Corny's progression thread or even a new thread (link to Corny's thread in my signature).

The stunted growth makes a diagnosis (not that I am qualified to do that) more difficult.

If you have a good reptile vet, I would drop off a fresh poop sample and let them run it. See if that might be an issue.

I adopted an adult corn who was very thin and didn't gain weight easily. He had been underfed and fed live. He had parasites and as soon we cleared that up (which was pretty easy), he started packing on the weight.

Not saying that Corny has parasites, but if he does, they are usually easy to treat.

At 300G, one 25-30G mouse every 7 days should fine. However, as said, if you want to feed two 20G mice, and that works for him, go for it. The issue with obesity is generally when they stop growing and you want them to stay lean. Figment is about 625G and about 5 feet and 5 years old (almost). I feed every two weeks (a jumbo 35-40G mouse) and he maintains. Once a month I feed two weeks in a row, or there about. He started getting little chubby on every week.

Sounds like you are doing really good things and giving a great home to Corny. Don't punish yourself for how he was treated before he got to you.

Keep us in the loop.

David