Quote Originally Posted by sharilynn View Post
Very interesting....So do you think that maybe since the wild balls can eat whenever they want & get that big, that maybe we are not feeding our captive balls enough? My ball (Mila) is rather large; I am 5'10" and she is almost that long, I have had her almost 8 years & do not know her exact age (she was an adult when I rescued her) Before she laid eggs last year by suprise (parthenogenesis) she was a more weighty & healthy looking because I fed her bigger rats, then when she laid her eggs I started researching & found this site & started following "the rules" that most people here live by fiercely & she never gained the weight back that she lost while incubating her own eggs. She looked a hell of a lot healthier before I started to feed her 1 SMALL rat a week...I used to feed her med-large rats no problem, so I am now feeding her 2 medium rats a week and she seems more content & hopefully will get back to looking like her old self. I need to get a scale of some sort so I can weigh her. But she is a big girl.

I really love this site & find useful info, but some people are a little too overbearing when it comes to "the rules" of care and there some questions that I just won't ask here because of that. Just like everything else every snake is different and prefer different temps (like mine), feed, hides ect.
But that won't stop me from coming here because there are people here who do realize that and will have your back when an attack is imminent, as seen in this thread.

HAPPY HERPING!!
I believe that the reality of things is different than your line of reasoning above.

In the wild, ball pythons are known to breed at much smaller sizes than what many of us do in captivity. They eat less and more infrequently, and grow much more slowly.

What in your eyes may seem as "healthy" looking may in fact have been somewhat overweight. I can't really say any more not seeing the animal, but based on your feeding regiment, it could be a possibility. Ball pythons generally should not look like blood pythons, and I am a believer that snakes that are overfed in captivity are many times less healthy than those that are fed somewhat more conservatively.

You may also have taken some advice out of context...1 small rat a week with no deviation is not gospel here...when I have a gravid girl lay eggs, I feed her one small meal as soon as she wants it (sometimes the day after laying) and then offer 2 and a few times three weaned sized rats per week to the moms until they start to look more full bodied again. Once they are back up to weight, they go back on a more normal feeding regiment.

And as far as this site goes, I do agree that there are a lot of information regurgitators that have probably spent more time online than with their animals, but for the most part everything that this site goes by does work for a lot of people and when new ideas come up that do work, they are readily accepted. You'd be surprised just how different things were even just 2-3 years ago.