Official Thread For Obtaining Growth/Size Data for Corns

Mallie, my big girl... About 4 years old now ('07 hatch, presumed to be from a late clutch). Don't have any lengths, but here are her weight records for the last year-ish...
8/5/10 - 216 g
11/5/10 - 270 g
11/27/10 - 261 g
1/16/11 - 293 g
5/24/11 - 367 g
6/18/11 - 395 g
9/27/11 - 440 g (give or take a few--forgot to weigh before food, so subtracted avg weight of medium to large adult mice)

Holy cow. I just realized she gained about 200 grams in the last year alone... Baby girl's gettin' BIG! Oh--I should probably note here, she grew pretty slow at first, due to inconsistent feedings through the first year (my fault, not hers). So if the weight gain for her age seems pretty weird, that's why. She's catching up quick, though... Lol!

Update thus far: Malachite (caramel morph corn snake; adult; male; hatched 2006)

Weight -
9/4/11 est. 360g (weight 895g - weight of container & aspen 535g = estimated weight of snake) [This is the first weight we've recorded.]

Length - {est. by length of shed -10% for stretching}
7/2/211 approx. 1.2 meter
8/6/11 approx. 1.3 meter
Last shed on 9/29/11 not measured/recorded (sorry!)

Just found this from another random search. I LOVE this idea
Freyja Born 7/16/2010
9/9/2010 10g
10/10/2010 12g
11/3/2010 16g
12/10/2010 20g
1/7/2011 26g
2/12/2011 40g
4/12/2011 68g
7/2/2011 88g
8/25/2011 128g
8/28/2011 Escaped
2/22/2012 Found!
2/22/2012 146g

Freddy Born 9/16/2011
2/28/2012 13g

Sorry that I do not have length, just not something I have tracked closely

I dont have lengths

They were hatched August 26, 2011, they are siblings

Bobbisue (produced by Mountain Folk Serpents, Bob Brown)
12/1/2011 13g
12/7/2011 14g
12/13/2011 18g
12/23/2011 shed
12/31/2011 18g
1/21/2012 25g
2/11/2012 31g
2/20/2012 shed
3/6/2012 40g

Remington (produced by Bob Brown)
12/1/2011 13g
12/7/2011 15g
12/14/2011 18g
12/16/2011 shed
12/31/2011 20g
1/13/2012 shed
1/21/2012 28g
2/11/2012 35g
2/11/2012 shed
3/6/2012 48g

Wilma is female, 30 grams, 8 months old, and 50 centimeters long.

Here's my info for Orville:

1. Age - 9 months old

2. Length - 51.7 cm

3. Gender - Male

4. Weight - 24 grams

Ra

1. 6-9 months
2. Unknown
3. Male
4. 10 grams 3/17/12

Zephyr

1. 6-9 months
2. Unknown
3. Male
4. 12 grams - 3/17/12

Tempest

1. 1 year, 6-9 months
2. Unknown
3. Female
4. 177 grams - 3/17/12

History from previous owner of Tempest ~

12/16/11 - 98g
12/24/11 - 101g
12/31/11 - 112g
01/08/12 - 120g
01/14/12 - 122g
01/19/12 - 122g
01/27/12 - 127g - Date of shed
01/31/12 - 126g
02/07/12 - 134g
02/12/12 - 140g
02/19/12 - 148g
02/29/12 - 158g
03/08/12 - 170g

Since nobody did anything with the data, and I think there's a wealth of info here, I did something about it:

I pulled and parsed all the data posted here which contained definitive birthdays for snakes. Without exact ages, the data isn't very helpful.

I added data from my four corn snakes as well.

I wrote a program which does some voodoo, and then renders a handy graph of all our data. The y axis is weight (grams), and the x axis is snake age, in days, since date of hatch.

I'm attaching a screenshot of the graph it produced, which I think is extremely helful as an 'average' growth curve. I'll also add more data and re-render the chart if people post more. If anyone is interested in the code (PHP, MySQL, and some JS), I'm more than happy to send that to anyone as well.

Conclusion - It's clear that the naysayers who tell us there isn't a corn snake growth curve because.... well I'm not even sure their reasoning. This proves that, just like humans, there are averages, outlyers, some snakes that will never be huge, some snakes that will never stay small, but it can all be plotted on a growth chart and still give us useful averages! Hope this helps people, I know it will help me and my snakes.

There doesn't seem to be a way to edit my post, so I'm adding this:

I forgot to put labels on the axes, so it may be hard to decipher what the chart is showing. X axis is snake age (in days since hatch date), Y axis is snake weight, in grams.

I need to do this with my snakes. I haven't recorded weights for quite a few in several months though. I had a small chart with a few of my snakes plus growth predictions, and I've been pretty damn close though based on the average growth between them.

Even if your data isn't complete, I'd still love to graph it! As we get more snakes on here, I'll put the graph up on a website where we can get to the interactive copy (you can zoom in/out, turn snakes on/off, etc). As long as you have accurate hatch dates, even if you've only got one or two points of data for your snake, it will still be helpful. Further, we don't have any data on snakes > ~250g or > ~500 days old. If anyone has data on corns outside this range, it will help us get a better idea of what to expect. Thanks again to all those who posted, and to those who plan to post their data!

The date at the top that says "Aug 2015" is supposed to be 8/18/2015.



If you want, you can pull weight data from my iHerp (link in my signature below). I believe I've made tracking public for all of my animals now.

This info looks great, thanks a lot! Do you know the hatch dates for these snakes so we've got some age reference? I see most of them started at 6g so that seems at least very close to their hatch dates, not sure how much they weigh when born. With Delta, it's harder to tell unless you've got a hatch date.

Didn't know about iHerp! Just signed up, really cool stuff. I don't see many people keeping good weight records, but I'm going to keep looking and see if there's helpful data on here I can work with. I don't see a link to your profile, though, if you post that I'll check out your iHerp page as well. Thanks!

LinguiniDreams said:

This info looks great, thanks a lot! Do you know the hatch dates for these snakes so we've got some age reference? I see most of them started at 6g so that seems at least very close to their hatch dates, not sure how much they weigh when born. With Delta, it's harder to tell unless you've got a hatch date.

Didn't know about iHerp! Just signed up, really cool stuff. I don't see many people keeping good weight records, but I'm going to keep looking and see if there's helpful data on here I can work with. I don't see a link to your profile, though, if you post that I'll check out your iHerp page as well. Thanks!

Click to expand...

If the hatch date is known, it should be on their individual iHerp page. For Nova I assume first week of September approximately, but I never got a specific date. Tibalt would have been around the middle or end of August, since Don had a late season last year. The rest came as subadults and adults with no other info than the morph and sex, so I tend to assume most are probably mid-July babies.

I've rendered a new chart with the additional info. The only one I didn't add was Delta, because I didn't see a birth date on iHerp. I'm curious if you could tell us more about Nova? That's the lowest line I've charted so far and seems like very slow to me, though I'm not expert! Perhaps you can shed some light on that. I'll work to get this chart up on a website where you can see it full-size very soon! For now, I posted 2 pictures of the same data. The only difference is the colors, in the hopes that if you can't make out which snake is which line on one graph because of the colors (they're randomly generated, sorry if they overlap!), then you can look at the alternate color version and hopefully figure it out. Cheers!

Nova is a weird little outlier. She has had a few regurges, but otherwise has eaten fairly well, but just hasn't put on much in the way of growth. She struggled to handle appropriate-sized prey for a while, which probably set her back greatly. Her growth rate seems to be normalizing now, and she is over 70g eating small hoppers. I have been bad about recording weights lately.

Great, thanks for the details! I'm sure someone will find it helpful. I was very curious myself as my snake, Abby, is the next-smallest on the graph behind Nova. Glad to hear Nova is doing well!

"Rufus" Growth Chart

Just spotted this thread so I figured I'd add my info as well, for what it's worth.

I'm not real good at making computer charts and spread sheets but I do keep Feeding, Shedding, Pooping, and Length and Weight charts by hand in a folder. So I took a few minutes to write and post:

Rufus - Male, Stripe. D.O.B. (not exactly sure. I acquired him in June of 2015, and was told at the time he was about 2 -1/2 months old. So I have assigned a birth date of April 1 2015 just for lack of knowing.

It was around the end of July that I began keeping records and weighing him on a regular basis.

7/30/15 - 43 grams, 18 1/2 inches long
9/1/15 - 61 grams, 20 inches long
11/1/15 - 84 grams, 22 inches long
12/6/15 - 107 grams, 24 inches long
1/29/16 - 127 grams, 26 inches long
2/27/16 - 148 grams, 28 inches long
3/30/16 - 171 grams, 29 1/2 inches long
5/5/16 - 204 grams, 32 inches long
6/30/16 - 229 grams, 34 inches long
8/2/16 - 255 grams, 36 inches long
9/3/16 - 275 grams, 38 inches long
10/19/16 - 296 grams, 39 inches long
11/28/16 - 318 grams, 40 1/2 inches long
12/30/16 - 339 grams, 42 inches long
1/29/17 - 359 grams, 43 1/2 inches long
2/21/17 - 370 grams, 44 inches long
3/30/17 - 391 grams, 45 inches long
4/15/17 - 401 grams, 45 1/2 inches long

* I always try to do my weighing after he poops so that I am weighing actual growth and not necessarily growth + poop.
* Feedings were always based on mice weighing 10% to 13% of the snake's weight. Up to the time he broke the
300 gram barrier, and from this point forth he gets a 30 gram mouse. (or equivalent). He was fed weekly up to
300 grams. At that time I went to a 10 day schedule and will follow that until he hits 450 grams, and after that he will be
fed every 14 days.

If the pics are too big or difficult to read let me know and you can have the excel file

Growth chart 1 by Bryan OHara, on Flickr

Growth chart 2 by Bryan OHara, on Flickr

Growth chart 3 by Bryan OHara, on Flickr

LinguiniDreams said:

Great, thanks for the details! I'm sure someone will find it helpful. I was very curious myself as my snake, Abby, is the next-smallest on the graph behind Nova. Glad to hear Nova is doing well!

Click to expand...

Once she was able to keep fuzzies down, she seemed to gain weight very quickly. I'm not sure which of my most recent weights is correct...two days ago she was 87, and today 95? I fed her 5 days ago. She should have been heavier before! But she is looking quite blue right now, so perhaps she drank a lot of water or something. Chances are good my scale was just unbalanced one or both times. I'll try and get a more accurate weight again after she sheds.