Reptile & Amphibian Forums

What’s the consensus on feeding baby snakes. Which is best, smaller pinkies more frequently or larger pinkies less frequently? What about rat pups versus pinkies/fuzzies? What method promotes growth faster?

Thanks

It really does not matter what the consensus is. Some zookeepers at the zoo I volunteer at told me that in order to promote proper growth of a snake, a hatchling should increasingly graduate to a bigger or next size prey as soon as it can...and eat as much as it can on the larger size it can take. The idea behind it is that it will grow faster if it starts absorbing some bones and harder skulls from its prey. If you keep feeding a snake from birth to about a year old with just pinkies as opposed to a snake that you consistently gravitate the size of prey from birth to one year of age, the former one will grow a lot slower even if you feed it a lot of pinkies all the time.

The best criterion for the size is to look at the snake's midsection and the size of the prey should be around 3/4 of it...and you can usually feed 2 preys.

Hope that helps.
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RAY