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I'm glad there were good opinions on this because it's clearly something that has a different meaning for some of us.

FR's comments make sense and I understand and respect his experience. If he was one of the pioneers in colubrid breeding (and I'm assuming he's telling us the truth) then we all owe a debt of gratitude because we have it easy in comparison. I also agree with him in regards to trying to follow nature as much as possible when keeping snakes. I'm a field biologist and more specifically a botanist and although I don't garden (hate it - why plant what is in front of you every day? Nature is one big garden anyway) I can look at plant or many reptiles, and from my 15 years of experience all over jot down notes, remember things and mimic pretty damm well what I see, OR realize that I can't mimic closely what's in nature, etc.

By powerfeeding I mean the modern practice of overfeeding your snake on a regular basis. The definition of overfeeding? Well, FR has a point that snakes will eat as much as they can, but I'm talking about captive snakes. To me overfeeding is supplying a snake a diet steady diet of what would constitute more than they would get over the course of a year, for example. Again, infer from nature. Snakes - save some exceptions - are not going to have a regular diet of a similar type food at regular intervals - that's just a fact. Their own life history, i.e. their adapated metobolism of being so effecient at using energy, is a clue that they have not evolved to being fed a regular diet of the same thing.

SO, that being said, to me powerfeeding is plugging your snake with more mice than one would expect it to have at any given time in nature at regularly scheduled intervals.

The fact that you can so easily pork a kingsnake up is also a clue from nature...you don't see it that often, at least I don't and being a botanist with my eyes on the ground looking for things that are 5mm across I see a helluva alot of herps during my time in the field.

In any event, overfeeding your snake is not healthy and not a good practice for those who really care about snakes - at least kingsnakes in terms of this discussion.

-John

I agree with everything you said, thanks for your input.

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms
Cherryville Farms - Reptiles

>>I'm glad there were good opinions on this because it's clearly something that has a different meaning for some of us.

Hi John,
Good thoughts, although you dealt as much with frequency and distribution as you did quantity.

I'll go back and take a look at what must have been a recent thread. In the meantime, i've always figured "overfeeding" ought to mean feeding that results in an unhealthy condition, obsesity being among those conditions. If an animal's fed "a lot" (as the guy in the movie Dave said, "I once caught a fish THISSS big..." anyway, if a snake is fed "a lot" and converts it to growth and grows rapidly, but at its adult size has a normal girth, is that overfeeding? Even if it gets food at different or more regular intervals than it would have in the wild? Or if it achieves in 3 yrs the size the average wild specimen would achieve in four? (that's speculative anyway because this conversation is in the absence of documented field studies of sizes).

Meanwhile, linking "power" feeding, or aggressive feeding, with "overfeeding" is simply a vocabulary choice one can make, but i don't see any reason articulated for that.

peace
terry

I tend to agree with the overall assumptions you make and experience should and does dictate to most of the present day keepers the regularity in which they feed the animals in the respective collections large or small. The best thing I think that has come out of this discussion in my opinion is that the overall consensus is that the animals should not be fed till they are blobs that are overweight. And for the newer keepers reading these exchages I hope that is a point they come away with. Besides for that all the rest is pretty academic to the overall health of the animals concerned.

One other point that might be made to the newer folks is that record keeping as far as feeding regimines, relational growth and weight etc. can be of extreme value to the keeper no matter the experience level when deciding the proper amount of food intake to produce truly healthy examples of reptiles in captivity. What that term means is all up to that individual keepers minds eye.

Take Care,

John Cherry
Cherryville Farms

Cherryville Farms - Reptiles

To all,

The whole point - as was expressed in the last posts of others - is that making a snake fat/obese is not healthy. To that end "overfeeding/power feeding" are one in the same to me; and that was my point from the beginning - that power feeding a snake is not a good idea.

The whole aim is to maintain a healthy collection, and in one of my responses I made the point of saying that individual snakes within a collection of even the same ssp. are going to vary in their responses to feeding (and that can be said of their behavior as a whole) - irrelevant of how much or how frequently food is given; some snakes will eat all the time, in the middle of ecdysis, others won't for days before, and a myriad of other situations, etc.

That being said the rest is up to the keeper to know each snake of her/his well enough to judge what keeps the snake at a good, healthy size. A little thin or a little heavy is not going to do anything really because as I just said each snake is different and there is no "exact" measurement for any one aspect for a given sp. of snake at a given point in its life. Nature - the genetic makeup of an individual snake in this instance - is a jungle of plasticity. So any responsible snake keeper has to use reasonable judgement as to what is the best feeding regiment. And IMO the better you understand what habitat particular kings evolved in and now inhabit, the better off your snake will be by doing your best in captivity to mimic nature - not by making it look like a natural habitat but rather by understanding the observations on what it takes to keep a king alive and well in captivity; after all nature is the best and original teacher.

And I totally agree about keeping logs/records of feeding and other info. I've done it for years and it is absolutely crucial if you are really serious about your snakes - both for their well being and your basic ability to care for them. I note shed dates, feeding times, feeding amounts, when I do serious cleaning of cages, wierd stools, weight and length taken at intervals, any parasite probelm, and anything I think could be important in caring for the animal as it grows and matures.

-John

YOU WROTE:
>>The whole point ... is that making a snake fat/obese is not healthy.
I couldn't agree more.

AND YOU WROTE:
> To that end "overfeeding/power feeding" are one in the same to me;
Here, you lost me.

Why make the two terms synonymous? What's the rationale for doing that? I object, because i think you're robbing herpers of a useful term. Allow me two arguments to try to make my point, and then offer an alternative proposal:

Argument #1:

a) "overfeeding" literally suits your (actually OUR) point that snakes shouldn't be overfed.

b) there's nothing INHERENT in the term "power" feeding that says anything about over feeding, or feeding to excess, or feeding to a degree that results in unhealhty animals. )someone who perceives they are "power feeding" MIGHT achieve any of those undesirable results, but so also might someone who perceives they're feeding "normal" amounts actually be overdoing it, and achieve those undesirable results. So the diff between real and perceived is a different issue)

So as Spock would say, it's illogical to conclude the two terms mean the same thing.

More importantly, i think having the two terms MEAN two different things is an asset in herpers' vocabularies, which leads to my other argument:

Argument #2:

For years breeders have often made the distinction to me of either "maintenance feeding" an animal or animals, or "power feeding" them.

a) Maintenance feeding as been used to describe feeding adequate amounts to sustain the animal, to keep it healthy, without regard to its pace of growth. I often hear people use this term to describe their methods with hatchlings they're going to sell...to minimize their own labor, they feed less than they might feed animals they're keeping for themselves--certainly they want to keep the animals fed enough to be healthy, but only that.

b) Power feeding has been used to mean the person is feeding more often or more items than with a maintenance diet, with the understanding that regimen will get the animals to adult size sooner than a maintenance diet would. There's nothing at all wrong with this, so long as it does not move into the category of overfeeding.

I propose we'd be better off if we accepted FIVE terms to describe five different feeding methods:

1) underfeeding--not feeding adeuqately to maintain an animal's health
2) maintenance feeding--feeding adequately to maintain health without regard to pace of growth
3) (I DON'T HAVE A TERM FOR THIS MIDDLE GROUND, OTHER THAN TO SUGGEST IT'S PROBABLY THE FEEDING METHOD MOST PEOPLE USE)--suggestions?
4) power feeding--feeding adequately to achieve an optimal combination of health and growth--the key being it's optimizing growth without being at the expense of health
5) overfeeding--feeding in excess to the detriment of the animal's health.

Does that make any sense?

terry dunham
albino tricolors

ps: i've owned more than 100 adult Hondurans and have only seen one obese animal among them--a not-very-lengthy adult female i obtained in that condition from a friend. It had--and has still, to a lesser degree--visible fat pads (something i've also seen on a few California kingsnakes and one Nelson's Milksnake). The Honduran in question failed to breeed successfully the past two years and I think, as i suspect you would, that her being overweight is causal to the failure to reproduce, providing more support for our belief that obesity is a bad thing. I've slimmed her down--some--and we'll see what happens this year. Interestingly, though, two hondurans i obtained with her had normal girth, and had been raised by the same fella under, he says, the same conditions. So her condition might be the result of feeding, or might be the result of some other factors.

i agree with the definitions, but to what standard is each definition held? just like you define a meter as 100 cm how do you differentiate between power and over feeding? i know it will vary with species, age, environment, etc., but without sharp records or some effective game plan I think regular/ perpetual powerfeeding will lead to an overfed animal- so essentially, when do you stop? also,is an animal overfed only at the point when it "appears" obese? then what? underfeed it or start a maintenance diet? and what would that be?
most people will think i am off my rocker or worse trying to micromanage my colony's diets with formulas and spreadsheets,( see my post to the Q, "how much should i feed my king" from a few days ago) but for the long term benefit of my animals, i find this sort of pro/prevenataive maintenance interesting. noone has told me to my satisfaction how kings or pines should be fed. by trying to manage diets last year they did very well (growth and reproductive success) on less than expected. it could've been an accident or as a result of stores from the previous year but if the success continues, i will stick to those methods.
any comments/constructive critique for what i laid out in my other post would be appreciated!

great thread.
pardon the rambling.
have a good one.

dave b

brooksi galore
eastern kings
louisiana pines
black pines
northern pines