Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have a gulf hammock rat that is about 30 inches. she is probably about the size of a nickel at the thickest section of her body, so obviously she is still young. she is eating 3 fuzzies(mice)every week, so, 12 a month. is this too much? she has no trouble, doesnt regurgitate them, and even looks for more after they are gone.the thing is, her scales are always stretched apart(i hope you all kno what i mean, like when you can see between their scales because they have food right there). the main section of her stomach is always like that. she is growing like a weed(she has more than tripled since when i got her)should i keep feeding her three a week? i recently switched from 4 large pinkies to 3 fuzzies, she is a great feeder tho and i never have to worry about her not taking a meal(*knock on wood )she will a pound a mouse before it hits the bottom of the tank, i wish all my snakes did that. so, what im saying is she has an appetite. any suggestions would be appreciated. thanks.
-----
"it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"
1.0.0 bearded dragon
1.1.0 green iguana
0.0.1 columbian tegu(for sale)
1.1.0 knight anole
0.1.0 green anole
0.1.0 asian longtail grass lizard
1.1.0 golden gecko
1.0.0 ball python
0.0.5 oriental firebellied toad
0.0.1 green treefrog
0.0.1 barking treefrog
0.0.1 cuban masked treefrog
0.0.1 gray treefrog
0.1.0 gulf hammock rat snake
0.1.0 eastern kingsnake
0.1.0 siberian husky
1.1.0 ratties
0.1.0 hedgie

If the scales are separated then you need to explain why. Is it because she still has food in her gut?? Is it because she is putting on fat?? Is it some other reason?? Point is there are many reason's why that could be. You also need to identify what you are doing with this snake. Is it a pet or a breeder?/ Do you want the biggest gulf Hammock you can get or a mid sized one??

Answer those questions yourself and then decide what you want to do. If your high end temps are to low she may be growing slower than she has the ability to grow at. Her temps are the factor in how easily she can process food to growth and how much goes to fat. Also the size of the feeder has something to do with it. As you move up in size from pinks to adults each step has less fat until you get to large adults which have more fat and jumbos have way too much fat.

A good thought may be to try to get the snake on rats sometime soon because a adult GH can eat a ton of mice. Rats will have less fat than mice and may eliminate some of the problem. Temps though, have a bigger role in it I would guess. Pay attention to where your snake spends its time. If it is as close to the heat as it can get then you may need more heat if it is at the other end of the cage all the time then you may have too much. Basically you have a lot of variables that pertain to this and you need to understand how each part of the equation affects the other parts. Food heat = growth, food>heat=fat, heat

I have to argue about the rats having less fat than mice. I have always been told that rats have way more fat than mice and I believe I saw a study someone did showing that rats have like 20% more fat than mice. I know if you get a rat snake eating rats, they grow like crazy.
As far as 3 a week, I only feed this much to my females who are getting cycled to breed after removing them from the winter cool. If hse is just a pet, do yourself and your pocket book a favor and cut it back to 1 every 4 to 6 days. Snakes will continue to look for food after eating because they are in feed mode. In the wild, if they stumble across a nest of baby mice or rats, they will eat all they can because there is no telling when they will eat again. They dont lose this instinct in captivity and is why a lot of people get bit right after they eat.

Well the problem with studies that give percentages is that you can take one study and give a report that favors 4 opposing statements. For instance if the study looked at comparable weight and looked at a higher weight like a ex-breeder mouse versus a small rat then the rat would be less fatty. A lower weight like a rat pup versus a small mouse then the mouse would have less fat. On a similar examination if they also looked at calcium amounts available then the larger group it would be the rat and the smaller group the mouse. Then if we take fifteen mice in the young adult age and got the total fat per weight and compared that to one jumbo rat weighing the same and the fat per weight from it then the mice win but the calcium...

My girlfriends father did advertising for major companies and he explained that he used studies to do smear adds and he would put out a add for one company to smear another company and base the claims he made on a study. The smeared company would then have him put out a counter add and he would use the same study as the reference for their add. Kinda like politics. So you really need to look at the study report yourself to get a real picture. Mice are easier to raise in large scale then rats from the breeders I have talked to. They also cost less to raise and they make a higher profit on them. Just something to think about. Also a adult gulf hammock would do better on a diet of small adult rats than he would on many adult mice.

Later Jason

I looked on a top feeder breeder website and they have specific information containing crude fat content in all types of feeders there. I cant say which one or this post will be deleted but if you look at some of the top frozen rodent companies, you can find it. Apparently, a rat the same size as a mouse has about the same fat content. And surprisingly, accrding to their matrix, and adult mouse actually looses fat as an adult as compared to a subadult. Rats gain more. Thanks for intriguing me into looking into that!

I got ex-breeder mice from breeders instead of small rats to be cheap and all my snakes passed a thick greasy stool after every feeding. The first feeding back on rats and they where back to normal. I will look into some sites though but I know me and I am pretty stubborn so I will still think that a small rat is better then two mice for a 5 foot rat snake. By the way did they give the calcium amounts???

Later Jason

>>I got ex-breeder mice from breeders instead of small rats to be cheap and all my snakes passed a thick greasy stool after every feeding. The first feeding back on rats and they where back to normal. I will look into some sites though but I know me and I am pretty stubborn so I will still think that a small rat is better then two mice for a 5 foot rat snake. By the way did they give the calcium amounts???
>>
>>Later Jason

See http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/zoo/WholePreyFinal02May29.pdf

deg

Ok not to be a complete pain in the butt here are somethings to look at with this report. They list the following

Rat Small 10-50 grams Dm% 30 Protein 56.1% fat 27.5% ash 14.8% calorie?? 5.55

mouse >10 grams dm% 32.7 Protein 55.8% Fat 27.5% ash 11.8% calories??5.25

Now I have no idea what any of this means but I do see a problem with their size break downs. A leading pro at rodents (subtle) puts a hopper mouse at a low weight of 10 grams and a ex-breeder at a high of 45 grams. A fuzzy rat is a low of 10 grams and small rat is anywhere from 45-84 grams. So this fat to protein ratio size group includes all mice froma fuzzy up to ex-breeder as on size and group and a rat pink to a low end small rat as one group.

You will have to admit that a fuzzy rat is fattier than a small rat and a hopper mouse is fattier than a adult mouse and further a ex-breeder is fattier than a small adult mouse. Or at least I hope you agree because it will make this easier. In counting all the mice from that size range you have no idea of what size mouse they used. Same with the rats. You would like to assume that the result is a average but there is a saying about that. Like most things people don't like to read too much past what they want to see. So in my opinion this is a very misleading study result. It is also intended from the looks of it as a guide for large animal keepers in zoos and kind of directed at big cat keepers but it list a lot of weird things as well.

Believe what you want to but if you are going by this report you may want to reevaluate your stance and look at a rat and mouse a little closer your self. You should notice that the size and age of the rodent has a lot to do with its fat content. Where it comes from and how it was feed and kept also has bearing. They feeders are frozen you could dissect one pretty easy and look at the build of the body and the size of the fat stores yourself. I never have but what the heck.

just some observations.

later Jason

I power feed my snakes rat pups fresh out of brumation for yrs now. Rat pups put alot of weight on my snakes pretty fast and they contain more calcium than mice which is great for egg growth.I know other breeders who feeds there snake rat pups for fast wieght gain too.
Hey Norsmis
nice pair of amel and licorice blk rats you p/u!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Dre! I was waiting for that exact pairing and got a good price on em too. I am still waiting for a pair of Dewey's next year though. Between those and the lucy's, I should have some decent black rats in a few years. Now all I need is a pair from those MO locals you picked up and I will be set!

I just noticed that my last sentence got all chopped up and is missing half of it. This thread got way off your question but a simple answer is check your temps and cage size. Also maybe some of the others on this thread would give their opinions of your situation to offer some different ideas. Sorry my opinionated statement highjacked your thread.

later Jason

first, i never intended on breeding her, when it comes to breeding i like to stick with lizards. and i dont want "the biggest gulf hammock" either. its just every week even after she just pounded 3 fuzzies a week prior she is cruising the cage looking for food again. even after eating 3 fuzzies she STILL is looking for more, thats where i draw the line though. when it comes to the scale thing, there is one section of her body that she just looks fat, like she has mice there, but i dont see how thats possible because i make sure she poops before i feed her again. right now she is in a 20 gallon tank since she is only about 30in. long. and i think a 20 gallon is 24in. i keep her pretty warm too, thats another reason she probably eats so much. she has a basking spot at about 90F that she basks under every day and the rest of the cage is probably about 85F. on the plus side tho, i just got a pair of rats that i am trying to breed so i will have rat pinkies. i thought that they would be to big for her tho, here head is really small and a fuzzy mouse is probably the most she could take right now. thanks everyone.
-----
"it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"
1.0.0 bearded dragon
1.1.0 green iguana
0.0.1 columbian tegu(for sale)
1.1.0 knight anole
0.1.0 green anole
0.1.0 asian longtail grass lizard
1.1.0 golden gecko
1.0.0 ball python
0.0.5 oriental firebellied toad
0.0.1 green treefrog
0.0.1 barking treefrog
0.0.1 cuban masked treefrog
0.0.1 gray treefrog
0.1.0 gulf hammock rat snake
0.1.0 eastern kingsnake
0.1.0 siberian husky
1.1.0 ratties
0.1.0 hedgie

If he is 30" he should be eating hoppers or small mice.....
-----
0.1 Snow Corn "Hope"
1.0 Ball Python "Wilson" (Castaway)
1. Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Chunk" (Goonies)
.1 Orange Albino Black Ratsnake "Peaches"
0.0.1 Mexican Black Kingsnake "Onyx"

"her head is really small and a fuzzy mouse is probably the most she could take right now"

Herpgirl,
If she is 30 inches, she should be able to take down a hopper, at the least. A hopper or weanling would be somewhat more lean than three fuzzies. You don't judge a prey size by the width of the snake's head, but by the girth of the thickest part of the snake's body.
Remember that a snake can swallow a prey item that is several times thicker than it's own head. They have forward/backward, side-to-side and up-and-down motions on the lower AND upper jaw bones. Their lower jaw is divided into two halves that are not fused together so that they can move either half independently.
They also don't have a sternum in their anatomy, which connects the front ends of the ribs in most animals, and a sternum would obstruct the passage of really large food pieces. In other words, snakes are very "stretchy" internally.
A good regimen for 'obsoleta' would be to feed her a rodent of thickness equal to about 25% greater than the snake's mid-body. Once every ten to fourteen days would not be too often or too infrequent. You WANT her to be active and hunting for food, even if you were going to breed her. Snakes are typically more healthy (sexually and otherwise) when they are more fit and not lazy and fat.
Is she already has a fat, stretchy midbody at only 30 inches that(using you words) looks like she still has mice in there, then I would'nt say that it is a healthy sign. She may be a tad overweight for her age.
Not to scare you, but gastric hypertrophy (a mid-body swelling) is also a common clinical sign of cryptosporidiosis. If she isn't regurging then I wouldn't be too worried about that. Still, it wouldn't hurt to screen her for that. You could sleep easy knowing it isn't that, if she tests negative.
Her ambient cage temp sounds too high if her basking spot is at 90 F. I would have a cool spot at around around room temp. (75-78).
Good luck!
Dusty Rhoads
www.subocs.blogspot.com

She mentioned that the snake is using the 90 degree basking spot. You mentioned it might be to hot. Now my question is this. If the snake is using the hot end of the cage do you really think she should lower her temps. I totally agree that for some 90 degrees is too hot but for others I sometimes think that it is not hot enough. My rule of thumb has always been if the snake uses the hot end for some of the time the temps are good. If the snake never uses the hot end then the temps are hot. And of course if it always uses the hot end the temps are too low.

I have noticed that the temps given by people seem to be misused in giving advice. It is very seldom that anyone ask what the snake is doing. After all that is what the temps are for. The other factors that affect the temps in the cage are often left out. Like room temps and if there is a heater going for the house or a air conditioner. Then you throw in user error when measuring...

For instance I have forced blown air as my heat source for my place. A 90 degree hot spot would end up to hot when the heat comes on, which is often, for almost all my snakes in smaller cages on the inside of the room. The outside (near the window) I need a 90 degree hot spot because of the cold coming in the windows (draft).

Everything else you said I agree with for the most part but this is one area that has bothered me for years online. I was wondering what you thought???

Later Jason

Hey Jason,
I usually try to look for a little more range than a 5 degree temperature difference between a cool spot and basking spot. I skimmed through her post and did not notice until now that she said this:
"she has a basking spot at about 90F that she basks under every day and the rest of the cage is probably about 85F".
From the word 'probably', I get the hint that she probably didn't get an actual measurement of the cool-side temperature.
There isn't alot of professional literature out there on 'obsoleta' care, but Bartlett's rat snake book says to have the cool end between 65-75F and the warm end between 88-95F for warmth-loving species (I assume a gulf hammock would be, since they are from Florida). If you were to use the upper extreme of both sets of temperatures, that would be a 20 degree difference(75F and 95F).
I agree with what you are saying about reading a snake's thermoregulating habits to discern proper temp. Sounds like that works for you and your animals just fine.
If her snake is using the warm end then it is probably fine.
However, I am suggesting that she may want to offer a slightly greater range (if it is in fact 85/ambient and 90/spot) to give the snake more of a choice of temperature gradients.
If the snake is already somewhat comfortable with the temps, who is to say that it wouldn't be even more comfortable if given a greater temp range?
I think the temp is the smaller issue here though. That section of her mid-body that looks "like she constantly has mice in it" worries me. Again, without seeing the snake, who knows if it is normal or not?
Dusty
www.subocs.blogspot.com

Good answer and I am with you all the way. I am also thinking that a infrared reading is in order to get the actual temp range. As far as the temp range, simply put more is better. Same with the cage size.

Herpgirl if you read this far a accurate temp reading may be helpful but the fact that you have a possibly swollen section of your snake may indicate something bad. A picture of the snake would help us as a group get a better idea of what you have going on.

Later Jason

I really like your in-depth thinking! You got me researching rodent make ups now because of this thread. I will post some findings when I get a chance. I am in the army and have college finals this week so...... Anyway, thanks for the stimulating conversation!

If you take the effort to look in depth at comparable size rodents, let me know. Like I said before i am stubborn in my beliefs of rodents but I would not mind being proved wrong. I would like the money it would save me for sure.

later jason