Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am looking at purchasing a scale and need to know how much the scale needs to read. This will be used to monitor weights of a hognose till full grown.

thanks

GREAT! All the preaching I do about keeping weights! I'm glad to help you, but it would be helpful to know what species you are talking about. I would imagine that most E & W hogs would be under 500g, only powerfed female Es would get that large.

So I vote for the 500g scale especially if you have other, only slightly larger, herps. If you are thinking about a digital scale that is great, but I wonder what the measurement increments are on a 500g spring scale.

Dwight Platt (1969) relayed the max sizes of Es known at the time. 1.15m long, and 761g (longest from Oklahoma), and 1.09m long and 1191g (heaviest from Minnesota). Disappointingly, he didn't report max weights of Ws.

Those sizes just blow me away. It's too bad we can't go back 400yrs before the Old World settlers and see how much bigger EVERYTHING was back then!
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Virginia Herping
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VaHS
Virginia Herpetological Society
http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/VHS

"The irrational fear of snakes is the only excuse a grown man has... to act like a complete sissy" - Colchicine

... nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. Now nature - tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.
Susan Sontag

She is a western sorry that i did not mention that in my last post.

I am looking at getting a digital scale.

The only herp that i own is a western hognose so that is all that the scale will be for.

Those weights you mentioned are huge, oh too see what they would have looked like.

I use a 5 lb. digital postal scale. Got it at Sam's club for $25. Works great, has tare button, grams or ozs., and a hold button. Can't beat it. Get a bowl, put it on the scale, hit tare, then put in snake. Simple and inexpensive.
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Jenea

1:1 Tricolor Hognose
0:0:2 Florida Redbelly Snakes
0:1 Gulf Coast Box Turtle
1:1 Red-eared Slider
0:0:1 Green Tree Frog
1:2:2 Mediterranean Geckos
2:0 Cats
1:1 Kids
1:0 Spouse

The problem with a scale that large are the increments and accuracy. But I just did some research and saw they come with 2g increments with an accuracy of -2.8g. Hmmm. That still should be sufficient for a male western that weighs
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Virginia Herping
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VaHS
Virginia Herpetological Society
http://fwie.fw.vt.edu/VHS

"The irrational fear of snakes is the only excuse a grown man has... to act like a complete sissy" - Colchicine

... nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. Now nature - tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.
Susan Sontag

"only powerfed female Es would get that large."

I dont agree with that sweeping statement, i have 3 female hogs westerns over 500g and one over 800g and i certainly dont powerfeed, my hogs all get one meal a week. Granted they are older all 4years but not powerfed or overfat!
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www.hognose.co.uk

Well, the thing with a postal scale is that it is set to weigh things like postcards and such. Mine is pretty accurate, just to test it out, I checked to see what was the lightest weight I could register. It was 2 g or .1 oz. Not to bad in my opinion.
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Jenea

1:1 Tricolor Hognose
0:0:2 Florida Redbelly Snakes
0:1 Gulf Coast Box Turtle
1:1 Red-eared Slider
0:0:1 Green Tree Frog
1:2:2 Mediterranean Geckos
2:0 Cats
1:1 Kids
1:0 Spouse