Feeding scheduals

[Ragnarok]

I'm new at snakes and I'm getting a pair of baby Type B Anerys. I was wondering how much you feed them at the different stages in their life. I'm trying to create a database to keep track of everything with, but I was hoping to get different peoples opinion on how much to feed them.

I'm thinking that I will brake their lives into 3 sections, Babies, Juvenile, and Adult. within the adult section I would like to break it down even farther into pre and post breeding periods and then a feeding schedual for when I am not trying to breed them.

What I would like to know is how much and how often should I feed them for each period. From what I have read, I think that the feeding scheduals, when I'm breeding them, should be different for the male and female, if you could include your thoughts on this it would be very helpfull.

Also what type of mice should I be feeding them at the different stages in their life and how should I define the different stages in their lives. By weight/length?

I know I'm asking for alot of information here and I'll under stand if people don't particularly feel like answering the whole thing but any help is appreciated.
Thank you in advance,
Ragnarok

[nova]

I feed mine every 5 days. Now it is two hoppers every five days. for hatchlings I would suggest pinkies. Adults use adult mice. anything in between depends on the width of the snake. Hope it helps.

[Alicia]

Your feeding schedule will depend on how fast you want them to grow. I have started out the young ones feeding every 4 days. If they are babies they will start out on pinkies, so 1 pinkie every 4/5 days. When they get bigger they will take 2 pinkies. When they out grow the pinkies you feed them fuzzies and so on. As they grow you will get a feel for what size mice and how often to feed. I push out the days between feedings as they mature and growth slows.

[kenalotia]

As they move toward adulthood, not only should you push out the days between feedings (as Alicia said), you can reduce it to one food item. Babies and juveniles can eat a lot because they're growing a lot. You can feed two pinkies or two hoppers at a time. I have a 4 foot long corn who's eating weanling rats (about the size of extra large mice) - and he only gets one at a time. And they can be spaced out to one every ten days or so.

I thought I would give some information about feeding adult snake, because I had trouble finding that info myself. I found tons of info on how to feed and how much to feed hatchings, but nothing about when they got older.

[Tim Madsen]

I feed all my snakes from hatchling until they reach adult size one or to mice of appropriate size twice a week Wednesday and Sunday. I consider the appropriate size to be 25% larger in girth than the widest part of the snake. Breeder females are feed twice a week as much as they will eat from the time they come out of brumation until I stop feeding them a month before they go back into brumation. Of coarse there are times they don't eat such as while in shed and when close to laying. Male breeders are fed once a week throughout the season. IMHO

[gekko1]

i pretty much power feed mine for maximum growth. i have a yearling i feed every 3 to 4 days. when i got him 2.5 months ago he seemed puny. now hes alot bigger in only 2.5 months. he was eating 1 pinkie, then 2, then moved up to fuzzies. the way i see it is in the first 2 years its not all that bad to heavily feed your snake. if he's not hungry he won't eat, simple. the scxhedule i use to move up in food size is if he'll easily eat two pinkies, move him up to 1 fuzzy. if he'll eat 2 fuzzys then move to 1 hopper. i plan on getting several females for him, a snow, a cal king banded and a couple rat snakes for hybrids. i will power feed them so by next year they'll be big enough to breed.

[Ragnarok]

Thank you for your feed back so let me see if I'm getting this straight, as babies they shoud be fed a pinky every 4-5 days then when they get a bit bigger they can be fed two every 4-5 days. When they are large enough I can move them up to fuzzies and follow the same pattern with them, then go to hoppers, then weanlings, then adult mice.

At what point should I start feeding them as an adult, I would like to breed them in 2-3 years. I've heard that you can breed them at two safely but that your clutch size could end up being reduced for the rest of the life of the female.

[Ragnarok]

And thank you all for your feed back I thought that I would be helpfull if I had this info before I ended up with the snakes :)
I'm supost to be getting them in the next few weeks and when I get them they should be 2 weeks old. I really can't wait till they get here. :) :) :)

[Tim Madsen]

I start feeding them as adults when they reach breeding size, which to me is 36 inches. The age is not as important as the size of the snake. A female should be atleast 36 inches to be breed. If that takes two years or four years it doesn't matter. IMHO

[kenalotia]

I generally think of 3 ft. as being adult sized. Of course, they continue to grow after this point, but that's the size at which it's usually safe to breed a female.

Try to watch out about power feeding, though. For hatchlings through yearlings, I don't know if it causes any problems. They just convert the extra food into extra growth. But power feeding can shorten the lifespan of your snake. When their growth slows down, power feeding makes them get fat, which can cause health problems just as in humans and other animals. I don't know if you'd intended to power feed or not, but I thought I'd warn you... So just be careful with it, ok? :)

[Alicia]

I also use 36" as the minimum for adult status and feeding as an adult.

[Tim Madsen]

What is power feeding? I ask this because people cry the horrors of power feeding (wish that term had never been invented) all the time. I have yet to hear two people give the same defintition. Some say it's feeding every other day, some twice a week, some anything more often than every 10 days. As far as I can tell there is no definition for power feeding. On top of that there is no proof that feeding snakes more than some people think is proper will harm your snake at all. No study has ever been done in this area. I'm told all the time by so called experts that my snakes are over weight and it's unhealthy. I've got several Cornsnakes over ten years old that lay clutches of 30 eggs or more every year with 98% to 100% hatch rate. These so called experts like to keep theirs a little on the thin side and as a result IMHO, their snakes have 7 to 14 egg clutches. My opinion on this and everyone else's is nothing but anecdotal, but I've yet to see any evidence in my colony that (power feeding) cause's any harm to snakes. Of coarse as I said this is only anecdotal evidence. It would be nice if someone did a study on this, if the herp community can decide on a definition for power feeding. IMHO

[kenalotia]

I don't know where to draw the line on what is power feeding and what's not. I don't object to someone feeding a hatchling two pinkies every 5 days or so at all. But I know someone who must have kept up the same type of feeding schedule they used for a hatchling no matter how big the snake grew. They were feeding a snake that was close to 4 feet long two "small rats" per week. (I don't know if they meant weanling or just a regular small rat.) In the summertime, they said, they sometimes fed him even more. On top of this, they were keeping the poor snake in a 10 gallon tank. I'm not an expert, and I'm not going to dictate exactly how much I think someone should feed their snakes. But I do think there is a point (and I don't know exactly where it is) where there can be too much food. Just keep in mind the amount of exercise your snake can get, and remember the health problems that obesity is linked to in humans and other animals.

[Tim Madsen]

There's the rub Kate, you don't know where to draw the line and most people don't. But they've heard power feeding is bad. When do you say a snake is obese or just healthy and well feed? I'm sure most would recognize a grossly obese snake, but where do you draw that line? All this is subjective of coarse. Nothing against you Kate but you recommend don't power feed but don't have a definition for it, as a lot of people don't. So as not to be totally without useful information on this I'll give my definition of power feeding. This is how the people I know did it when the term was first coined. You feed a mouse smaller than appropriate size every other day in order to keep the snakes digestive tract full at all times. As the snakes grows you keep feeding it every other day but feed more small mice. Usually the mice will never be larger than hopper size. Sometimes you'd be feeding six or more mice at a time. I'm not sure this procedure is healthy and I don't recommend it but I haven't seen it harm any snakes either. It's hard to type emotions and I'm not trying to start an argument about this (wish this old man could figure out how to use those little faces). Any how no harm intended. IMHO

[pdrau]

IMHO...There is no such thing as power feeding being harmful. In the wild animals of all kinds feed as food is available to them. We tend to equate power feeding to gluttony in humans. This simply isn't the case in snakes. My female ghost inhaled 4 hoppers in a 24 hour period without any problem with regurgitation. Both my male and female just finished off 3 hoppers each in a matter of minutes. I think the problems with regurgitation occur when a food item is too large for a snake or when there are other underlying ailments. Both of my snakes won't touch another food item if they are full. In the wild an animals focus it two-fold...to survive and reproduce. In captivity snakes in particular are looking for only one other thing....how to escape! Their innate instinct for these things will assure they are not going to put on the "Freshmen Five" or "Married Twenty" as we do. Feeding them less often will assuredly stunt their growth and possibly limit their capacity for reproducing large healthy clutches. Remember, in the animal kingdom it is survival of the fittest, not survival of the slimest.

Peter

[Ragnarok]

Kate & Tim, how would you define power feeding and how would you recomend going about it safely? I'm of the opnion that you could just as easily over feed a snake as you could a human, and I would really rather avoid having to deal with regurgitation. I don't want them to get fat, but I would like to have them be of a good size, and well muscled.
Thanks for your feedback

[Tim Madsen]

I posted what I think is the best way to feed in my first post & my definition of power feeding in my last.

[kenalotia]

I would use a mouse (or other rodent) that is about 25% larger than the snake at its widest point. You can safely feed hatchlings through yearlings more than you can adults, because they are growing more rapidly. For a new hatchling, I would start out feeding one pinky at a time. Some hatchlings need even smaller food, and can only take the head. As the snake gets a little larger, you can feed two pinkies. Some people like to feed every seven days. For a hatchling, I think it's safe to feed more often than this. I would probably go with a pinky every 5 days, then move up to two pinkies. When the snake is big enough, you can move up to fuzzies, and so on. I generally wouldn't feed more than two items at a time. If your snake can handle three items of one size, it's time to move up to the next size rodent. Start off with one of that size, then you can go to two per feeding. This is just what I, personally, would do. I am in no rush to breed my snakes, so I don't have any reason to rush them to adult size. As they get towards adulthood (~ 3 ft.), then you should slow down the feedings, because they aren't going to grow so rapidly any more. You can space out the feedings to about 10 days, and I would feed just one item at a time - but try to get the right size. When you move up a size, it always looks like the snake won't be able to get it down, but they do!

I know it doesn't sound like much, but snakes don't have to spend tons of energy on producing heat like we do. :-)

[Ragnarok]

Kate thank you for your repley, and your opinion on the issue. I'm probably going to be feeding 1 pinky every 5 days at first and when they get a bit bigger feed them two. So I'll probably be going roughly by what you have outlined.

Sorry Tim I guess that I just missed your definition of power feeding in the last post, I tend to be pretty tired when I get home after work and the gym.
Thanks again for your help,
Ragnarok