I feed/fed my BHPs rats a;most exlusively as adults, although they will eat almost anything. One adult rat every 2-3 weeks. My male is about 8'. My Olives eat the same but ate rabbits when they were younger, but not much smaller. My 11' male Olive has bulked up as most seem to do after 9-10 ft, but they do that with no increase in feeding. I feed my smaller olives every week to 10 days.

I lost a large female olive a couple of years ago to, of all things, gout. 2 weeks after that, there was an article in Reptiles magazine on that problem. She was fatter at 23lbs than the male was at the time, but over 10'. Evidently gout was not as uncommon as I thought in reptiles.


- Yeah - I know gout can be an issue too with weight/fat, surprisingly this bhp is not really overweight. She is a little on the big size, but closer to a weight you would expect going into the cooling season then "overweight".

Anyway - thanks for sharing your experiences.. I have lots of medium rats in freezer but think I may mix it up a bit and see the larger snakes react to it.

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