predicting growth for breeding

[hoo-t]

The past several days I have been thinking about a way to pull the measurement data out of my degei database, graph it, and then use that data to estimate the size of my snakes at the beginning of the next breeding season. The degei application will plot a graph of historical measurement data, but I don't like the graph, and it doesn't do projections. OK, so I know that I could just guess at it and probably even get FAIRLY close. And I know that there are variables that just can't be quantified (going off feed for example). BUT, I thought it would be fun. Sooo... I did it! I used excel to prompt me for a snake's id, pull the data into a spreadsheet, graph it, and plot a linear regression projecting 6 months beyond the last measurement. Again, I realize there are no guarantees, but I think it will be at least somewhat valuable as a planning tool. Here's a sample graph -



Steve

[Shirkin]

Thats pretty cool man It is good to see where you are and where you were at, and where you could be heading.

[Seneschal]

Interestingly there seems to be a repeating pattern of four months of growth, one month of leveling off, and four more months of growth...wonder if it'll be a continuous trend? update it in a year and let's see how it turns out!

[hoo-t]

Interestingly there seems to be a repeating pattern of four months of growth, one month of leveling off, and four more months of growth...wonder if it'll be a continuous trend? update it in a year and let's see how it turns out!

Actually, I've printed out graphs for about 10 snakes, and for the most part, they all show a similar pattern. One thing to note about my data is that at first, I was weighing snakes immediately after defecation. That became tedious, and I let a few slide. Eventually, I started weighing ALL the snakes on a monthly basis, which I like a lot better. However, by doing this, there is some error based on full/empty bowels, and full/empty stomachs.

There was some leveling off from about December through spring, even though most of the snakes that I graphed have not been cooled or bred. I think the colder weather and the shorter light cycle did have an impact.

The snake in the graph that I posted did go off feed for several weeks in June, so that explains the dip in June. Except for that brief fast, she's always been one of my most eager feeders (she would take my nose off on feeding night if I'm standing too close!)

I'm really anxious to see how close the predictions are in November!

Thanks for the comments so far!
Steve

[Seneschal]

Wow!! That's really interesting to see that kind of growth pattern repeated. Now I have to wonder if it's universal or if the growth cycles vary from keeper to keeper. I haven't kept weight records up until around early May, and since then I've noticed that my big girl has grown a lot without any variations in her feeding schedule or abnormalities in behavior; at the beginning of May, empty, she weighed 1500 grams exactly. A couple weeks ago she weighed 1850grams. Her last feeding she wasn't as enthusiastic as normal (normally she comes out of her hide and climbs up to meet me when I walk into the room carrying a rat, and the rat usually never lives longer than 45 seconds-a minute) and she refused this time for the first time ever (except one notable occasion when I offered F/T and she looked at me like I was an idiot and proceeded to ignore it for an hour!)...do you think it might be a growth pattern or something like what humans experience in childhood, a growth 'spurt'?

Just something I've noticed lately and have been wondering about. 350 grams in a few months seems like a lot to me, but I don't have much experience in it. She isn't fat, and I haven't been overfeeding; do yours experience that kind of growth at that size?

XDD sorry for hijacking, it just seemed relevant and I thought I'd mention it.

I do look forward to seeing how your prediction pans out!!! It's an interesting experiment!

[Alice]

This was a very interesting thread. I've tracked my snakes growth on a monthly basis for years, but never charted them out. I've got a chart created in Excel, but I don't know how to post it in this thread . . . can anyone help me on this?

[hoo-t]

Seneschal, I think the growth patterns are likely seasonal, or possibly even something that I did without realizing it.

As far as 350 grams in three months, remember that the larger the snake is, the more weight she can pack on (350 grams over three months is about 115 grams per month. 115 grams is about 7% of a 1500 gram snake).

Alice, I'm sure there are several ways of doing it. What I did was use my graphics program (Paint Shop Pro) to do a screen capture including the graph, cropped the image to include only the graph and saved it as a jpg image.

Steve