Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Any ball that is a spring 03 off spring that weighs anywhere near 750 is being overfeed and could create health issues down the road. Take you time with your animals. If you just can't wait buy sub-adults or older females.

Why? What is limiting them in the wild when food is abundant? In the wild, they will eat as often as they like if there is food available.

Rodney

“Why? What is limiting them in the wild when food is abundant? In the wild, they will eat as often as they like if there is food available.”

Hi Rodney –

I want to say at the outset that my remarks are not directed at your animals or your husbandry, which is where some of the posts seem to be coming from. I’m replying just to what you said above.

Is there any doubt that you could feed your pet dog an unlimited amount of food and it would become obese rather quickly? Or, for that matter, that many humans will do the same to themselves? It is generally recognized that this will lead to health problems and shortened life spans.

The situation we create for captive pythons – practically unlimited food, lack of internal parasites, lack of predators and lack of energy expenditure on prey capture - is just not something that their evolution has prepared them for. These are animals that are adapted to take big meals, but to go for very long periods without eating. If you look at the limited data on wild-caught ball pythons, you simply cannot find the sort of “fat” animals which many of us are producing. The one thing I feel that ball pythons in particular have going for them in these situations is that most seem to have an internal mechanism that prevents them once they attain maturity from maintaining these huge fat stores which we allowed them to amass when they were younger. But not all - I have one big adult female that might be described as overweight.

Since the wide-scale keeping of reptiles is in its infancy, so to speak, we have a long way to go before we will be able to speak definitively on the long-term health consequences of these practices. But, bear in mind, most of the people espousing feeding huge quantities of food to captive snakes on these boards have little if any scientific, medical or nutritional training. And in addition, many have been keeping ball pythons for periods you could count in months, not years, certainly not decades. This for a species that may live for four or five decades. We used to say that if you could keep a snake alive, bring it to maturity and get it to reproduce, then you must be doing things right. Well, we are well past that stage with ball pythons. But whether we are doing things “right” for their long-term health remains to be seen. Time (and certified longevity records and lots of necropsies) will tell. In the interest of complete disclosure: I feed my ADULT ball pythons all the rodents they care to consume.

-Joan

In the wild even if food is abundant they will still have to work to basically get a meal,it very seldom walks right past them.Sometimes they have to travel some distance for a meal so they burn off excess weight.They get exercise by climbing (even ground dwellers sometimes have to go over a branch to get somewhere),traveling from one area to another,swimming across streams,ponds,waterways,etc. to get to better hunting grounds. The list goes on and on.With all that said they have no reason to sit around and get fat,obese,plump,or whatever term you want to use.Even ambush predators eventually have to move to get a meal,if they didnt they would starve.In captivity,unless you have a really big enclosure, they dont get all of the requirements they need to keep from getting fat to quick.They basically lay there and expect to be fed as much as they want as often as we deem necessary to do so.Oh they move around the cage and move around when we have them out but its nothing like what they do in the wild,so again they get fat,obese,etc. and IMO doesnt help in their life expectancy.

Rule of thumb,just because they are the size or look breedable doesnt mean they are mature enough to do so.Heres a scenario: Lets say you have a teenage girl(13) that looks old enough to have sex even though we know better (if we are good parents we better).Lets say she gets pregnant.Theres a good chance of her having the baby without complications but theres also a greater risk for her and the child because her body isnt mature enough to handle the stress of having the baby.All kinds of complications can occur just because her body wasnt ready for such a stressful situation.Same can be said for B/Ps or any snake that isnt mature enough to breed.They can have complications when having birth and IMO isnt worth the risk of the animal just to say i bred them. Regards Bill McLeod

Hi Bill -

Off topic, but I think your example of not letting a 13 year-old human female breed is not exactly on the mark in this discussion. Our decision to delay the onset of what our culture deems maturity is just that - a cultural not a biological decision. It is not “because her body isnt mature enough.” I believe 13 year-old females would produce more healthy offspring than those who delay reproduction until they are significantly older. It made biological “sense” to reproduce ASAP when life expectancy was very short; it makes less cultural sense now when young girls in a post-industrial society lack the means to raise offspring to maturity successfully on their own.

-Joan

And yes i think it has to do with the maturity of the body as well as the devolpment of the body.The reasoning behind the whole having kids at a young age back in the day was because IMO of them not having the knowledge that we do now plus it was a necessity back then to have as many kids as possible to help keep things running smooth.You know the whole woman stays barefoot and pregnant while the man does the duties of farming.Even though it is possible for a girl to have a kid at that age doesnt mean it is a safe recommendation to do so.There can be complications.This i know as fact and not fiction.Anyway way off topic and sorry for the poor analogy but thats me, always getting off on something other than the topic at hand lol.Regards Bill McLeod

You really can't compare a cold blooded animal to a mammal. Their feeding responses are totally different. Cold blooded animals use far fewer calories. Warm blooded animals use something like 85% of their food intake just to keep warm. (15% for locomotion and growth) Also, snakes have just about the most efficient form of locomotion of any animal. While they may get some muscle tone out of moving around, they don't burn much in the way of calories. Also, the pregnant teen analogy has a lot to do with pelvic bones, calcium availability, weight--these don't apply to snakes as far as I know.

And while it is true that they may need to move around in lean times to find food. These types of animals usually get a lot of food (in certain years) in the warmer months. For instance, it rains, there is abundant plant life from all the water and warmer temps.(grains,fruit), then there is a rodent explosion from all the extra food, the snakes eat a lot and often. The temps cool. The following year there are a lot more snakes because they laid a lot of eggs due to all the extra food. The next year there are more snakes to feed so they get less food per snake. They produce less the next spring. Next year, rodents are everywhere again, due to fewer snakes, and so on. Every time there is a drought, or a lot of rain, this cycle tends to happen/start over. It eventually equalizes if the weather is consistent, but then another drought or heavy rain starts it once again.

I think these animals are well adapted to this type of feeding/breeding cycle just because of they type of animal they are. (again, not like mammals at all).

Rodney

Ah, I knew I should have deleted any reference to mammals! It has led to a sidetracking of discussing the point of the original post - the possible health consequences of obesity in captive ball pythons. But as we all know, there just aren’t any studies yet on this in ball pythons. Heck, most hobbyists don’t even get their animals necropsied. I suppose one should expect argument on the obesity issue; the debate surrounding human obesity never ends.

I guess I’ll just leave it at this. I am unable to back up my assertion just now with data, but here’s what I think: The reptiles which have lived the longest by far in captivity have not been overweight. And, indeed, were probably considered slim or underweight to many observers. Up until fairly recently, zoos were the only places that kept reasonably reliable long-term data on their collections. Hopefully, the number of private individuals is increasing who will add to this store of information.
-Joan

Interesting insights Ken, I am always interested in learning. It sounds like you have lots of knowledge about this species that I am not aware of. Please share.
"Any ball that is a spring 03 off spring that weighs anywhere near 750 is being overfeed and could create health issues down the road."
Please explain these "health issues" you spoke of in detail. What are they exactly? How are they related to captive conditions and feeding? Also, you use "750 grams", why is that? What is the magic in that number? In the wild, how much does a 6 month old ball weight? What about at 1 year? When do they start breeding in the wild, at what age and weight?
I assume you have documented info on all these point?
As for the statements about other animals... let us not forget these are reptiles. Ectotherms... they are a WORLD apart from dog, cats, people, etc. (IE, they can manipulate their metabolism)
Looking forward to hearing all the documents facts on this issue.
Regards,
Jeff Houston