Power feeding?

[muddoc]

I have a couple additional questions concerning this:

1. With the increased feeding when they are young does it affect the snakes long term growth rates?

(With this I mean if you feed one snake 2 times a week and it gets to 500 grams and then you have another snake that was only fed once a week at 500 grams and now you switch then to a regular once a week feeding do either of these snakes exhibit faster growth than the other while going into sub adult hood?)

That is a hard question to answer, simply based on the fact that each animal is different. Even animals from the same clutch have growth rate differences. There again, define long term. Remember that since Ball Python breeding is relatively new, I would bet that there are very few 15 year old Captive Bred Ball Pythons around, and the ones that do exist, probably don't have very good records kept on them. I hear alot of people talk about long term effects on Ball Pythons by doing x, y or z, but I don't think they have been looked at closely for long enough to really hypothesize about long term effects. I can tell you that I have three male Ball Pythons (Albino, Het Pied and Hypo) that were fed like this until 500 grams, and then switched to every 7 days, and they were all over 1200 grams by 18 months old. They are now 4 years old and are over 1500 grams. That's as long term as I can tell you from my collection.

2. Is it still classified as power feeding if you are offering smaller prey than the snake can reasonably take? Pinky rats instead of fuzzy rats?

I don't know how to answer that one either, as power feeding has no real definition. However, to me, I would still classify it as power feeding, since even though it is a smaller meal, you are still introducing food to the stomach before the last meal is completely digested.

3. Has any noticeable difference been seen between males and females who have been fed using this practice?

The reason I ask this is we recently purchased two (1.1) baby Mojave's from a smaller breeder and he was trying to feed them on an every 3 day schedule. The female had three meals and the male 2 meals before we got them. We have kept them on the three day schedule with the intention of dropping them back to 4-5 day schedule around 300 grams then every week at 600 grams. These are definitely keepers in our collection, but I just want to make sure I am not doing something that is going to have long term affects on them.

It doesn't look like I am much help here, as I don't have a good answer to this question either. Mostly I can't answer, because I have never power fed any of my females. I have occasionally put a female on a 5 day feeding schedule, but have not seen a reason to put size on them quick, as they will not mature for at least 18 months (minimum).