hypnoctopus

One of the snakes I currently own is 6 years old. Although I hatched him and he was a good feeder for me, the person who ended up taking him fed him only sporadically. When I took him back about 6 to 8 months ago, he was about the size of a 2 year old snake, maybe a little smaller. Not skinny though, just small. Since then, I've been feeding him an adult mouse once a week, thinking that a schedule and feeder size like that would help him get to a proper size. He has grown a lot under my care. I haven't weighed him, but I would consider him adult size now, but definitely a small adult. When I took him out for some handling recently, I noticed that he's actually looking a little bit chubby, which was surprising to me since he's a fairly small adult! So I'm thinking I'll have to slow down his feeding a bit. I guess that even though he's small, he no longer has the youthful metabolism of a younger snake, so his large and frequent meals are now starting to make him fat rather than longer.

My second example is a corn snake that I got as nearly a yearling. His breeder had fed him a maintenance diet, so he was only 10 grams when I got him. He also had some feeding issues at the start, with a few food refusals and also a few regurges. After that, he ended up being a good eater, but it did take several months to get him on track. I had him for 5 years and he never got as large as my other adults. I don't have him anymore, so I can't say what he's looking like now, but I have a feeling he would still be about the same size.

Those are the only two snakes I've had that were underfed during their formative years and both of them never got to be very large adults. Has anyone else ever experienced this?