Corn Snake Fatty

[Jaded_Heart]

So one of my corn snakes is just starting to develope small hips. I want to get her trimmed down a bit before she gets downright obese.
so my question is:

Do I cut down her FREQUENCY of feeding, or cut down the SIZE of her food?

Right now she eats 1 Jumbo mouse once a week. She weighs 410 grams and is 3 years old.

[Chip]

I personally am feeding once per 10 day weanlings to two fatties that were returned to me -so sort of doing both. These girls came back way beyond the 410 grams you are up against! I think a jumbo a week would make any corn fat, I only feed them after egg laying. I have a 700 gram girl 5'+ foot who alternates between a small mouse and a large every 7 days and maintains her weight. She's pretty active though.
This one is supposed to weight 1100 grams, and I think I believe it.
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[Dorgrim]

slowing the frequency of feeding rather than the size is the way to go. smaller mice have a higher fat% so maybe add a few days extra between that weekly feeding. My biggest male gets one adult mouse every two weeks and its just right for him! maybe add 2 days to your current schedule and see if that helps curb it just a little :)

[Chip]

smaller mice have a higher fat%

Is that true once they become crawlers and develop muscles? I know pinks are very fatty, but small mice sure seem lean compared to jumbos....

[Nanci]

My snakes that are in the 400-500 gram range eat one medium 25g mouse every 14 days. I would try cutting her back to that, and see what happens. I have about six that are in the 550-625 range that eat one medium 25g mouse (sometimes a 30g) every three weeks. I monitor everyone's weight at every feeding to make sure they are still gaining very slowly- 5-10 grams per feeding.

[Dorgrim]

Is that true once they become crawlers and develop muscles? I know pinks are very fatty, but small mice sure seem lean compared to jumbos....

a small adult mouse and a jumbo ADULT mouse probably have similar fat content. but baby and baby-ish mice have much higher fat content.

pinkies <-> hoppers = slightly more fat adult mice= lower fat content because of muscle development and they move on to eat actual food and not the milk that they are getting from their mothers.

[Chip]

I tried to Google that for 45 minutes. Just too impossible filtering through all the results with my keywords. By looks, I would think a jumbo mouse was more fatty than a wean, but I have nothing to base that on besides how they look and feel. I bet the info is out there.

[bitsy]

http://rodentpro.com/qpage_articles_03.asp

Extract:

Mouse, Domestic: Neonatal - <3g. Crude fat %=17.0
Mouse, Domestic: Juvenile - 3-10g. Crude fat %=30.1
Mouse, Domestic: Adult - >10g. Crude fat%=23.6

So juvenile mice contain the highest percentage of fat by body weight. There's only 6.6% difference in fat content between pinkies and adults.

[Chip]

Thanks. I have seen this; my big question is "are jumbo mice fatter?" I'm assuming they are retired breeders -though as with all adult mice-they seem to be over 80% males.

[Jaded_Heart]

Mouse, Domestic: Adult - >10g. Crude fat%=23.6

looks like the fat content should be the same for adult/jumbo adult based on the reference of "greater than 10 grams" above. they don't give you a maximum weight with that one, just anything more than 10 grams.

[bitsy]

Given that adult and jumbo mice are both going to be fed to adult-sized Corns, then the jumbo mouse will logically have more fat than the adult mouse by weight (rather than as a proportion) and the Corn will be getting more fat than it would if it ate adult mice.

[Chip]

Well, yeah. My question is percentage. Those jumbos sure "look" fatter, though it doesn't mean they are. Not sure how I'd determine BMI on a dead rodent, but I would be willing to do some tests.

[bitsy]

Is the percentage significant though? If Corns of the same size are eating an adult or jumbo mouse, the jumbo mouse will give them more fat. I'm not sure why the percentage of fat is really an issue in that instance.

[Chip]

Only in the sense of feeding smaller meals or spacing time between meals -which seems to come up a lot.