Reptile & Amphibian Forums

last night as i was watching my snakes do their thing, bask in the moonlight, try to escape, and hunt. my sleep deprived brain came up with an idea. why not let them have a midweek snack, possibly a very small pinky dropped in or held by very long tongs so as not to associate me with food. it would be placed in a different location every time, but in areas where they normally cruise. i mean all that hunting and nothing to show for it. i haven't worked out all the details but a tiny pinky shouldn't upset their feeding schedule too much right? plus they get a little reward for being active, and since my habitat is set up as naturally as possible. a bit of mouse might make them feel a little more at home. of course regular feeding would still take place outside of the cage. just a thought, any suggestions, comments appreciated.
thanks
Mike

LOL, first of all if you start feedin' snacks and it goes over well you might wind up with overweight ball pythons. We don't want that now do we . Once a week feeding should do nicely. If they are actively searching for something to eat before the next feed time you might want to try and give them something a little bigger than what you currently feed them. A larger food item should hold them over till next feed time.

Ball pythons are nocturnal, which means they are active at night as opposed to day time. The cruising you are seeing might be nothing more than normal night time activity.

Quig
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Don't interupt me when I'm talkin' to myself

I thought about that and I'm sure you are right I'm probably just anthropomorphizing, although "normal cruising activity" for a snake "is" looking for food, if you think about it. Anyway I was talking about 1 tiny pinky a week and a slightly smaller mouse or rat during normal feeding times so total caloric intake would be the same, more or less, if i really wanted it get anal about i could weigh each specimen to ensure total grams of food per week are within a certain margin. and i think due to the reward factor caloric expenditure would be greater because the snake "knows" now that there might be food around and would spend more time in hunting mode vs laying around doing nothing mode or trying to escape mode. any like i said I'm not a snake expert. just a dude with almost one whole week of BP experience. lol
thanks
Mike
BTW how do you tell if your snake is too fat or too skinny?

Mike do you have more than one snake in a cage? If yes, don't feed them anything when there together . Your going to be posting on here about how your snake choked to death on it's dead cage mate. If your answer is no then forget the last comment. Or as they say on SNL (Never mind) Claude

hadn't thought of that well nix the pinky treat idea
thanx
mike

You don't have to worry as much with ball pythons about them associating you with food...a big monitor or burmese python, I'd worry about, but balls aren't exactly going to think of you, godzilla-sized-human, as a potential prey item. I feed all of my snakes in their cages...I can count on one hand in the past 16 years how many times one of my snakes has bitten me. Every time it was my fault for not washing my hands after handling rodents!

Ball pythons are not dogs, and won't appreciate a 'treat'. They will not be less hungry, because a pinky is next to nothing for a ball python of any size. Even hatchlings need more than a pinky.
Constantly cruising snakes may mean that something is not quite right in your cage. My snakes only do a lot of active inspecting when they're hungry or if the boys are looking for girlfriends. As I type, the only snakes moving around are the two sexually mature males - everyone else has found a nice spot to hide and is hiding. The rest will move, yes, but they do not really cruise the entire cage like they are searching for anything...unless it's coming up on feeding day.
So, it may be that your snakes don't like sharing space, it may be that they are hungry and need to be fed bigger prey items or maybe just a little more often (every 5 days instead of every 7), or maybe they don't like their hide spots. A couple of my snakes absolutely hate fake rock hides, but love cardboard boxes. Go figure.

A truly obese ball python is one that is so fat it can't bend itself in half. When you hold it, it should be able to grip you firmly and crawl around. You want a nice, round little snake. If you can see a backbone sticking up, it's too skinny. If you took a cross section of a healthy snake, it'd be like an oval. A skinny snake will look like a triangle.

It is pretty hard to get your ball python obese. Most ball pythons will stop eating (seemingly for no good reason) when they start to gain a lot of weight.

~jenny
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