Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I have heard so many stories of people's burms growing like crazy and becoming 8 feet in a year and stuff, especially females. Mine was born in August, bred by Bob Clark. The father was 8', and the mother was 12'. It is now mid january and she(it is a female) is only 40". Her last shed was on december 8th and she was 36" then. Only 4 inches in a month for a young growing female burmese? Doesn't that sound a little slow? I have been feeding her 2-3 adult mice a week but this week will be her first rat (medium). Maybe I'm just being paranoid.

she is growing just fine but 2-3 adult mice seem to much you might want to reduce that because you wouldnt want to end up with a 20 foot burm. Also you could get her too fat and she wont live that long. When my burn was about 4.5 feet i started feeding it med rat. So you might want to wait a month or two longer to feed it med rats. Untill then just feed it 1 sm. rat a week.

I shouldn't have said "adult mice" becuase the "adult mice" at the petstore have a large range of size. They range from large fuzzies to jumbos. I know I amnot over feeding her because after I feed her she doesnt have a bulge, and the next day she looks really skinny. She isnt obese at all. I asked someone on the forum earlier about whether or not she could take a medium rat and they said she could take it no problem ( I think it was Brian Smith or Carmichael or Todd or someone) So today I tried her first medium rat and she RACED out of her hide spot the fastest I've ever seen her move, and I expected her to lunge at it as soon as she got within distance. She was about to but then got closer and stopped going after it. She looked really interested but for some reason just didn't bite. Could this be becuase it was bigger than her normal meals? Or do rats have a different smell than mice?

Actually nevermind, I dropped the rat right in front of her and in about 30 seconds, she began swallowing it and had it down within 5 minutes with no problem. I think it is a perfect size for her. Another plus, instead of feeding her 2-3 times a week, I will only have to feed her once ever 10-14 days. How long do you think, untill I can handle her again?

I forgot to tell you this but burm eat non stop. You can overfeed them easily so if your burm still seems hungry after eating that is normal. Juts dont feed it too much.

i usually wait like 2 or 3 days for all of my snakes to digest their food because i have had cases before where one of my snakes threw up its meal because i handeled it like a day or two after it ate and you dont want that because they prey item smells really bad.

Give her a medium rat! At this age, you are going to have a hard time overfeeding it. With a medium rat (or an appropriately sized meal as she grows) she will not become obese and just roll over dead one day. When she's 16ft I wouldn't be throwing her 20lb rabbits every other day, but at this age I wouldn't worry about making her "obese" or hurting her health.

~brian