First off I am a firm believer it is damn hard to over feed a colubrid. If temps are right they should have a fast metabolism and poop out meals soon after they eat. I know there's always an excpetion to the rule but most overweight snakes I have encountered were owned by pet owners who just liked to see snakes eat, and especially eat large rodents. So these people were also less likely to have thier snakes set up with proper space and temps which contributes to the extra fat.

As some people mentioned it depends on a particular snake....I think it's wrong to say you can only feed these snakes this much or else this n that will happen. My breeding males do not eat much until summer hits, in spring they are mostly interested in breeding but they always look healthy. So far all my snakes have come out of brumation looking the same as they went into it. They eat a mouse here n there, get busy with the females, and then when breeding season is over they become ravenous and eat like pigs.

But my females are way different. I always feed them small mice, and I offer 6 at a time every time EXCEPT thier first meal when they come out of the cooling is 1 average sized mouse to get thier systems running again. Now for those who said 6 mice at a time?!?!?!?! Keep in mind in gram weight this meal would equal the same amount of food from 3 large mice....but in my experience it takes longer for them to digest the large mice and make a wider lump with scales being stretched as opposed to a nice belley full of small mice. Sometimes the females take all 6, and other times they dont. I let them chose what they want to eat and that's that. I have 25 adult snakes right now, only 1 has some fat deposits and it came from switching her up to rats after her second clutch last year........she is a monster of a Mexican Black King and she has taken 2 medium rats per meal a few times. Very large snake. Everything else looks perfect. All have serious muscle tone and are not fat at all. My egg production is always great and I have seen less than 10 slugs out of roughly 400 eggs. I also feel double clutching is not something we decide. If the female is still a bit thin I put the male in anyway and after she gets nailed by him she is ready to eat, and eat a lot. They blow back up, lay second clutches and look fine afterwards. I made the mistake of not reintroducing a male to a corn last year and she laid a clutch of slugs....probably would have been another perfect clutch of eggs if I let him get her again. Not all of my snakes grew as rapidly as I expected. Some will only eat a little when offered a lot and they grow much slower. Other would eat a lot but did seem to gain too much weight so I cut them back to a skimpy diet. The best example in short was my Speckled Kings did not grow anywhere near as fast as my Brooksi. Those Specks had optimum set ups and may have become little fatties if I hadn;t cut back thier feeding but for most of other stuff....being MBKs, Thayeri, Brooksi, Gophers, Pines, Hondurans and Black MIlks they all eat like pigs and grow long and muscular as opposed to stout and obese. To sum it up you simply cannot expect a large clutch of eggs with all being fertile from a female not eating a lot of food. I am sure it happens but I think worrying about overfeeding a female during breeding season is not worth your thoughts, feed feed feed. Mater of fact I get confident my snakes are indeed gravid whe the female starts eating less, and even then I still offer them a mouse or two until they hit their pre egg laying shed. I do not see how some people can keep thier snakes on a minimalistic diet, breeding or not. In Brooksi I have seen babies I produced look too thin if they were not being fed at least 2 times a week. I was unfortunate enough to buy some Brooksi last year that arrived so thin and just depleted of nutrition that I had to feed them every 2 days for 2 weeks straight before they gained and kept weight on. Sorry to be so long winded. In closing I would like to hear about incidents when snakes were over fed and did die young...........I do not know anyone who has had this happen? Tom Stevens

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