Troubled Feeding

[dakski]

Boas are incredibly efficient when it comes to maintaining weight and gaining weight even with smaller prey than other snakes might need to grow.

I've heard of Boas eating 1 meal a year as adults and overweight and losing no weight. Long-term this isn't ideal or recommended, but I know breeders who have taken in overweight boas and tried to get them to lose weight.

The key is to not let them get too heavy, but that's too late here, and obviously not your fault.

I wouldn't jump down to smalls right away, or necessarily at all. If you went jumbo to large, I'd got large to medium next, and stay on mediums for a while if not indefinitely. My growing female BI, who is about 5 pounds now, eats a medium rat every two weeks. You could probably feed your guy a medium every 3-4 weeks and he wouldn't lose weight. I don't like feeding smaller meals less than every 3 weeks, but also he should be leaning out. If you are worried and he stops dropping weight noticeably and quickly, you could feed every 2-3 weeks instead. However, I don't see this happening.

In the wild boas do not get regular meals or get to pick the size .

I definitely would not feed fish.

From what I have heard, large rats - up to about 220G - are okay if fed. Anything bigger than that is likely too fatty for a boa. People seem to have different sources of prey and different ideas of what small (60-90G), medium (90-150G), and large (180-220G +/-) are.

Bogerophis - do you think a 200G rat is too fatty? Not second guessing, but I've heard that up to that weight it is okay from some breeders who agree anything bigger is probably too fatty.