I thought I would follow up on this - I left the female on her regular feeding schedule this winter and she still loves food and has eaten consistently every 2 weeks. Without fasting, her head shape and tail thickness have developed like the male's did at this age, which seems to mean her skeleton is growing and developing a lot. She has also swapped a lot of her baby fat for muscle, and gotten noticeably stronger - she can reach her head towards something and suspend about a foot of her neck in open air now with no wobbling (the male can go even farther and stand straight up like a cobra for extended periods if he wants, he's very strong). Just like the male, this new strength and size seems to have increased her confidence and she's started climbing up onto furniture more boldly, and even allowing herself to drop down from short distances instead of nervously climbing down like she used to (again, the male is even more extreme, he will get onto the arm of the couch and deliberately overbalance to plop down to the floor, it's very stressful to watch). So, the maturation and changes I saw the male go through I think just happened to coincide with his beginning a winter fast, and weren't actually triggered or caused by it. He's gone off food again this year, and again I'm leaving him to it and offering around once a month without pressuring him. The fasts seem to do him a lot of good!
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