Are my BPs healthy weights?

[frankykeno]

I'll just increase their diet a little, and if I'm still having problems, I'll see a vet. I was planning to take them to our local petstore for a checkup on Tuesday anyway. ^_^

Your petstore has a vet?

Yeah, they do that sometime, but I take the hint and get them food as soon as I can. I think the main problem is that i waited WAYYYYYYYY too much time to switch them to rats. They are very picky eaters and used to refuse rats all the time, so I just kept them on largish mice. They're finally eating rats now and I think they're already putting on weight--and They're stopped cruising since I started them on rats too... I think that sounds pretty accurate, don't you?

Many bp's grow quite fine on mice. It's not a mice or rats thing, it's about providing the right total volume of prey each week. If you feed rats that might be one rat, if you feed mice that might be enough mice to equal the volume of one rat. It's also about providing a prey animal that is itself in top condition. No matter how much you feed, if the prey animal is dehydrated, underfed or sickly, it doesn't provide enough for your snake to grow much on.

[QUOTE}And, just wondering, what is the purpose of the fectal? Could parasites be causing a increased motabalism or something? And do they need special equipment to do it?--or does a petstore have the knowhow?[/QUOTE]

Again, I would ask, does your petstore have a vet on staff or that visits there? Most petstores quite honestly don't know their butt from a hole in the ground when it comes to good care. Most give bad advice or very outdated advice they are simply parrotting and really don't know why. If you have a good petstore that has real experience, then you are pretty lucky - most are not that way at all.

The idea of tubs is growing on me... In their an informational thread? I skimmed and I didn't see it stickied..

At the top of every page here is a Search function. Type in "plastic tubs" and you should find tons of threads (I just tried it and I did). Read a few of them to get a good idea of how to set up two tubs as I firmly believe part of your snake's issues with growth may be related to the stress of communal housing. Add that to feeding routines and the possibility of parasites.

Speaking of shared housing, one of your issues with taking in fecal samples is you are going to have quite a lot of problems doing that right now because unless you catch the snake's pooping, you cannot confirm who dropped what. Likely if one has parasites, the other does too but for the sake of knowing for sure, I would suggest you seperate them first into their own new homes, then do fecals on both after they are apart.

Again, most likely a good vet would suggest both be treated since they have lived together and been slithering over each others poop, laying together and sharing a water dish but personally I'd rather collect stool samples individually after they are seperated.

Phone around to vets now, ask who does fecal floats on snake feces onsite. Ask what they charge for that service (the snake doesn't go in, just the poop sample). If the report comes back that they have internal parasites, which suck the nutrition right out of whatever they eat, then you would take the snakes in and the vet would treat them.