newbie question

[zina10]

What is the deal with "maintenance feeding" being a dirty word? It does NOT (and should not) mean starvation diet.

It means to MAINTAIN a good weight, not to push rapid growth to get up to size for breeding or just because. Not to feed heavier to help out a females body during the process of building eggs.

I dare say most maintenance diets are still more food then they usually grow up on in the wild.

Ball Pythons bodies are designed to consume as much food as possible for part of the year and then to fast for a long part of the year because during the dry season food is scarce. So when people have a Ball Python that eats like no tomorrow, they think this will go on indefinitely. It does not. There comes a point when their natural cycle kicks in and they know they had enough. Over feeding (which is what most people do, whether on purpose or not) can kick this in sooner and make it last longer. While feeding more conservatively often ends up in an animal taking shorter breaks or sometimes no breaks throughout the year.

Matching prey size to body size works well while they grow. A growing body needs more nutrition. Well, eventually they stop growing so much. While a snake grows all its life technically, it is almost minute once they reach a good adult size. So if you continue to match the rodent to the adult PB size and try to feed weekly or bi weekly, where are those calories supposed to go in a non growing body of a snake that spends 95% of its life hiding somewhere and being sedentary ???

Ball Pythons are ambush hunters unlike some other snakes. They sit and wait. Then they sit and digest. They don't move around very much if all their needs are met, unless they are a seeking out a partner to breed with or to move from one hide to another, since the old one don't work anymore, the smell of their waste giving them away to possible prey wandering by. So as adults they do not need many calories. Unless you feed a breeding female.

And how is it any different to feed an adult a small rat weekly or a medium rat every 2 to 3 weeks ? It isn't really.

Charts are there to give people a guideline. But you have to take into account how Ball Pythons are designed to eat throughout the year and also the individual animal. If they start refusing, back off some in either size or how often you feed. If they are in their ravenous stage, feed weekly. A breeding female, bump the amount of food.

I never have nor will I ever stick to a strict schedule. They are individuals. I have learned just to "listen" to the animal. It doesn't have to be every friday of every week. That is convenience for us. Sometimes I feed every 10 days. Or 14 days. When one starts to refuse, it gets to skip a scheduled feeding, etc. The hatchlings may get food every 5 days if the food item is small and the snakes hungry.

But one thing is for sure, adult BP "pets" (non breeding) SHOULD be fed a maintenance diet. By the true meaning of the word. You should maintain a good weight and size and not keep trying to add to it by throwing calories at them, that they cannot use up. That isn't love. A snake doesn't have to have rolls of fat to be overweight. They get health issues just like any other animal and humans from getting more calories than they use up.

A medium rat every 3 1/2 weeks to a large female is not overfeeding. A small rat weekly to a large female is not under feeding. Sounds like adult maintenance feeding, which is a good thing.