Reptile & Amphibian Forums

does anyone have a feeding chart like for example:
100gr-250gr= fuzzy rat
250rg-500gr= weanlings

thanks for all posts!!

I personally like to feed slightly smalled meals more often. Feeding prey that leaves a slight but noticable buldge freaks me out. it also takes them longer to digest. something 100-250grams i feed rat pinks. then 250 move up a size of the rodent. if youre feeding every 5-7 days your babies and or adult will not starve. ive also had better luck feeding smaller. Bigger prey items IMO have caused my snakes to get fat and laz, again thats IMO. to much fat in a female i have heard it BAD! Is this correct? anyone?
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Dave

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Depending on your definition of "fat"...

It WILL be detrimental to your breeding operation if your female is obese

I have also heard that it is best if MALES are kept "skinny" - again, this depends on your definition.

Excess fat buildup can hinder sperm production - but if your male is too skinny, he also doesn't have any energy reserves to support his breeding efforts

For females, again excess fat can hinder reproductive efficiency in several ways - basically, she won't be as efficient if she is obese, and obesity causes numerous other problems.

All that being said, females have the greatest reproductive requirements for expenditure of energy to support ovulation, and to support the growing embryos as well as their egg membranes and shells... so if you breed a female that is exactly at "ideal" weight, she may not have enough energy reserves to support her reproductive effort. A little bit of fat wouldn't hurt to support her efforts there - and provides a better chance that she will not be so terribly thin after she lays her eggs. THIS IS NO EXCUSE TO OVERFEED A FEMALE INTO OBESITY!

I would say that generally, at the start of breeding "season," you want your female to have just a little more fat to live off of than your male - but that both should be a little heavier than "ideal" weight, as both will be off of their feed during breeding, and both will expend more than their usual amounts of energy.

I say all of this from my understanding of reproductive physiology, and my understanding of Ball Python breeding and energy expenditure. I am in college majoring in Animal Sciences, and I have grown up around snakes. I have bred snakes before, but I have never myself bred Ball Pythons before. If anyone wants to pick apart what I have said, I leave that open to the true experts in this field.

Cheers!
~Rebecca
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0.1 Dumeril's Boa '04 (Courtney)
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)
1.2 Ball Pythons
[1.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]
[0.1 '05 Het Hypo (Sylvia)]
[0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]

Though I am no expert on breeding ball pythons, or breeding anything in general, but I do try and keep myself well versed on what others have done (ie reading what people post here and other sources). However I do have to agree excessive weight on either male and female is bad for their health and breeding ability. A bit of extra weight is good to keep the animal going during the rigors of breeding and producing eggs.

As the majority of ball python breeders incubate eggs in incubators instead of allowing the female to incubate the eggs herself (hence she won't eat for a much longer time) too much weight on her isn't necessary. Most females will eat during most of the gestation period though smaller meals than normal should be offered. Once the eggs start to develop inside of her, they do take a lot of room and thus, less room for food.

The real question is how much extra body fat is good, and how much is too much?

Far as I know there has been no studies of the amount of body weight wild ball pythons build up to lead to the breeding season and how much weight they loose during breeding and gestation/incubation. Snakes in the wild spend a lot more time searching for a meal than they do in captivity but when they find food, they will eat it, even if they recently consumed a meal. Hence why most snakes will take a second meal if offered after they finished eating one, or even a few days later.

It would be a good project for somebody who can get down to Africa and do a study on wild populations of ball python adults. Tagging them and going back at different times of the year and weighing them. A record can then be made of how much they weigh before natural cooling times, during peak breeding season and after eggs are lain/incubated for the females. The long fasting time most wild females undergo in nature may explain why most do not clutch every year, taking a year off to regain lost weight and build up some fat reserves to hold them through incubation fasting.

There is no easy answer for this.

I can't remember the exact proportions, but many people will tell you to feed prey items that are something like "half again as big (in girth) as the snake at its widest point."

I hate that rule, because it doesn't take the snake's body condition well enough into account - just as going by weight in grams alone doesn't give a clear picture of body condition. I have had a snake actually split the tissues at the hinge of the jaws on both sides of her head before because we used to feed by this proportion method.

What really matters is the snake - it's own weird preferences, and the proportions of its head. Some snakes just prefer small meals that they don't have to work too hard to swallow. My largest female seems to lean this way, so I feed her about 3 undersized weaned rats once a week.

As far as the largest size prey to feed an individual, I would not feed a snake anything that is larger than 1.5 times the width of its head (widest point at the hinge of the jaws). They can obviously handle wider, but you never know exactly how much wider until you find something that is too wide, and results in injury.

The snake that I had before that had split the sides of her mouth kept resplitting her mouth any time she was fed anything larger than her own head, which caused her to have to stretch that unwilling scar tissue. It was pretty awful. She was a very large, robust albino rat snake hybrid (black X yellow in some arrangement), but could only eat adult mice or similarly sized rats. Other than that, she was quite healthy.

Best of luck!
~Rebecca
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0.1 Dumeril's Boa '04 (Courtney)
0.2 American Pit Bull Terriers (40lb darling lap dogs:Brandy&Mara)
1.2 Ball Pythons
[1.0 '05 Orange Hypo (Specter)]
[0.1 '05 Het Hypo (Sylvia)]
[0.1 '03 Normal (Sue)]

Some animals get stressed at the presence of LARGE prey. one of my females is a great f/t rat feeder but any rat bigger than about 6" in lengh goes to waste as she (the snake) will go hide. Each animal really is different. Go but your animals and not so much a "chart".
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Dave

www.DNReptiles.com
Myspace/DNReptiles
Myspace/blog
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