Obese corns

[Susan]

Just took a long hard look at some of my adult breeder corns and realized that they may be obese. I've started them on a diet, i.e., they are now getting much smaller prey items than normal. Is there anything else I can do? Increasing their exercise is not something I'll probably have much luck with. How quickly do you think they'll drop the extra weight. One female, who is a large snake to begin with, shows definate "dimples"/"love handles" when she coils. She laid 2 nice size clutches this year, but still looks like a gravid female. I don't want the few pudgy snakes to drop too much weight and not be prepared for brumation this winter.

[bmm]

I would say unless you are feeding HUGE food items, a better diet might be sticking with the same size food they are eating now but feed them less and give more exercise.

If you fed once per week now, go to feeding once every ten days, and make sure they either get taken out and held once or twice per week, or even better make sure that they have branches in tank. If they live in rubbermaids and branches don't fit you can set up one ;arger tank with branches, and let each one spend time in this every week. *clean VERY well in between snakes of course*

bmm