Not gaining any weight

Hello again! I recently started to weigh my little Nyx using a kitchen scale (I know it's not very accurate, but I guess it's better than nothing and it was the best thing I could get).

As I said in my introductory post, she's about 4 months and 1 week old, I got her on Sep 9th. Before I got her, she ate three times (so that's 3 pinkies in 2 months), but since then I fed her regularly. Tonight was her 12th meal since I got her, but she won't gain any weight.

After her first two or three meals with me, I could see that she is gaining a bit of weight, but since then she seems to keep her weight constant.

I weighed her on Nov 8th before I fed her and she was 11-12g, tonight, before feeding she was 10-11g. We just got back from our second visit to the vet, so I am sure she has no parasites.

She is very active, even after she eats, I get her out every day for about 20-30 minutes (except after I feed her).

What should I do? Should I try to feed her 2 pinkies every 5 days? Or should I try to feed her 1 pinky every 4 days, instead of 5?

They only retain about 30% of the food weight, and as they get older that number drops.

Since you are feeding pinkies, your food weight is probably only about 1 or 2 grams. You can't expect much weight gain from that. Maybe a half a gram a week.

I would not feed 2 yet because she's too small. At 11 grams, she should be eating about 1.1 to 1.3 grams per meal. Most people don't go to 2 pinkies until they are about 20 grams. You still have a way to go.

She is very young and very small. "Slow and Steady" is the key.

I'd follow the feeding chart, and feed at a five day interval. In addition, I would cut crosswise slits through the pink's skull and back, about four slits. You can use a tiny scissors like a fingernail scissors. This allows for better digestion, and a study has proved that babies gain weight faster on slit mice. Now, some people might argue that you don't need to be in a hurry for your baby to grow, but in my opinion, the faster they are out of the more fragile hatchling state, the better. Within reason :-)

I know that she is still young and small and I do not want to overfeed her either. But I saw many other corn snakes at her age that are between 15g and 22g and I thought that maybe I do something wrong. I pointed out that she is so active, because I thought that it may have something to do with this. Anyway, thank you for your replies, I already knew the feeding chart and I plan on following it. I did not know about the slitting trick, I will try it and see if there's any change. I posted the question because as Nanci said, being so small, she is more fragile.

Thank you guys, you are awesome!

Of my 4-6 month olds, many are still below 15g while only a handful are above 20g. Granted, I haven't been feeding very aggressively, mostly because I know I'm going to be stuck with most of them over the winter and I don't have the space for much larger housing until I sell off about half. My first corn seemed to grow so slowly, yet he was well over 300g by his second hatchday.

They do take some time to grow

This is the growth rate of one of my babies his hatch day was 7/14/2016 and I got him in October of 2016 and yes I know that I should keep a better recording of his growth. I was just getting discouraged at how slow he was growing but I knew he was healthy and happy so I just chilled on the weight. Not a big deal



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