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Power feeding

Daenerys said:
So, you want to tell people new to corn snakes "oh don't listen to that rule, you can breed your snake earlier than 3/3/300 as long as she has good muscle tone etc" and the risk them breeding a female too young? I completely understand everyone's point about the 3/3/300 rule being good guidelines. What is the harm in telling newbies of this rule, and then adding on "as long as she has good muscle tone" or some other tidbit of info as well? I think its a great thing to have something that is easy enough to understand for new people to use as a guideline, because I have never bred a snake before and I am not sure I would know just what to look for...I'd feel a lot better waiting for my snake to be older or bigger rather than risk breeding her young.
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The harm is that it's not a rule, it's not a guideline and not safe. By parroting the 3's thing, you are basically saying that all corns are safe to breed as soon as they reach this milestone. That's far from the truth and is dangerous. Just because an animal is 3 years old, 3 feet long and 300 grams doesn't automatically mean it's go time.

BTW, bigger is not better! And how does following the 3's thing show you what to look for? It doesn't! It's just a generic milestone that means nothing except that you have a 3 year old, 3 foot, 300 gram snake. It doesn't mean that your snake is ready to breed.

Wayne

*edit* to really get into your post. You cannot 'add' to an illegitimate rule. You can't add that you need to look for muscle tone as well as have a 3/3/300 thing. That's just piling on more sh*tuff to a bigger pile of sh*tuff.

Corns can and will continue to breed safely bigger and small than the 3's thingy calls for. It's learning the who's, what's, when's and how's to breeding, to know.
 
I think that the main virtue of the 3/3/300 guideline (and I agree that it's not a rule), is to dissuade inexperienced new owners from breeding too soon.

Yes, there will be some which breed safely younger and somewhich need to be older. I had one that started aged 5. However, unless you have the experience you really won't be able to safely gauge the correct "condition" i.e. muscle tone, body size etc.

If novices come to the board asking "When is it safe to breed my female?", we need to have some kind of advice to offer other than "She needs to be in the correct physical condition", because a new owner simply isn't going to understand what that means. Let's face it, some experienced ones don't.

I don't see the 3/3/300 guide as illegitimate, just a useful shorthand for years of experience.

It's the same as The Munson Plan; guidelines that will work safely for the majority of females. It won't work for all of them but unless we can come up with an alternative I think it's reasonable advice to give. We need to face the fact that most people intent on breeding Corns aren't going to spend the necessary years "learning the who's, what's, when's and how's to breeding".
 
bitsy said:
It's the same as The Munson Plan; guidelines that will work safely for the majority of females.
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It's more like the rule of thumb feed a prey item one to one and a half times the diameter of your snake at the snake's widest part. THAT is very generalized; IMO the Munson Plan is quite detailed and easily adaptable to be made more conservative if conditions warrant.
 
I was reading through this thread and got bored about the power feeding, rulez of 3's, when to bred, etc. So my mind started wandering and ended with world domination again. So this is what I'm thinking of doing. Scrap the Munson plan and feed like there's no tomorrow. Replace her water dish with one full of protein drink. Pump her full of steroids and have her work out with a shake weight twice a day. I figure in no time she'll be huge. I'm still trying to find some adamantium so she can be like Wolverine.

Artists impression
Explorer-Fawcet-giant-snake.jpg
 
I agree with Wayne as I stated earlier. The 3 plan just isn't as precise as some say. I see the 3 plan thrown around here all the time. If a snake is 5 years old 5 feet long and 300 grams it fits the criteria. However it should not be bred because it is too thin. I would much rather see a 2.5 year old 3 foot long 300 gram snake be bred. There are just so many variables besides age length and weight. Is the snake skinny, is it fat, was it off of food for 2 months before breeding and she is already drained, etc.....
 
Nanci said:
It's more like the rule of thumb feed a prey item one to one and a half times the diameter of your snake at the snake's widest part. THAT is very generalized; IMO the Munson Plan is quite detailed and easily adaptable to be made more conservative if conditions warrant.
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I actually find the Munson plan to be almost power feeding and potentially a little too generalized. This is only recently and only because I have a snake that should be ready for hoppers, based on weight, going by the Munson plan. But I have deferred to the other rule because I think a hopper would be bigger than 1.5 times her diameter, because she is a little on the skinny side. I think feeding by weight is more generalized than feeding by girth. That being said, I still think the Munson plan is wonderful, however, I think it too could be dangerous if followed blindly....just like 333.

I would liken the 333 rule to the 1" of fish per gallon rule used by fish keepers. It is only a guideline, doesn't take many things into consideration, but it is a starting point. It's also easy to remember for newbies. It may be a lazy man's rule, but I guess the Munson plan could be too. I think it at least holds people off and hopefully by that time they will have acquired some more knowledge. I can understand how these "rules" can be dangerous because they can encourage people to turn their brain off, but as many others have said....what's the alternative? They aren't perfect, but they'll have to do.
 
w00dg0blin said:
I was reading through this thread and got bored about the power feeding, rulez of 3's, when to bred, etc. So my mind started wandering and ended with world domination again. So this is what I'm thinking of doing. Scrap the Munson plan and feed like there's no tomorrow. Replace her water dish with one full of protein drink. Pump her full of steroids and have her work out with a shake weight twice a day. I figure in no time she'll be huge. I'm still trying to find some adamantium so she can be like Wolverine.

Artists impression
Explorer-Fawcet-giant-snake.jpg
Click to expand...

:laugh01: Excellent!
 
A snake would never eat every day in the wild, it would be lucky to eat once a month. You are way over feeding your snake and your motives are all wrong in my opinion. You might consider running a puppy mill this might be more your stile of animal husbandry.
 
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