Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My snake isn't a year old yet, and she seems to be putting on more length than thickness so far. Anyone care to comment on when their snakes started to really thicken up? Does it happen around a certain age? Are other people's snakes pretty thick right from the start? I don't want mine over weight, but she doesn't have that heavy body shape of many of the animals I see on these posts. She eats fine (weekly) on one weaned or small rat. So far she's shedding monthly.

I use the "pick a feeder animal no bigger than the snake's thickest part" rule of thumb for gauging her meals.

Thanks for any thoughts! I'm not at all concerned, but with my ball python, she seemed to hit an age and then really got big.

One thing to keep in mind is that right now your animal has a ( I'm assuming ) perfect length to girth ratio. As long as you keep that in perspective as the animal ages you'll have no problems with being overweight. I'd go out on a limb and say 95% of Blood Pythons in captivity are fed way too much, and are inturn overweight/obese/morbidly obese. You can feed an adult a large Rat every 3-4 weeks and they will still breed and fuction normally, but weight 10 or 15 pounds less than the vast majority of BP's out there, and you'll see the length to girth ratio is more what it should be ( and not a Red or Brown Sausage )

Thanks for your observations. It's just so hard to tell, because I'm sure many of the photos shared on this site are probably posted by long-time breeders and "experts" in this field--by virtue of years and years of experience. Some of the snakes look simply huge, and mine, by comparison, isn't close to those proportions.

Thanks!