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Determining Under or Over Weight Corns...

D

daisy

Snow! Snow!
I have been searching around and paying close attention to threads that discuss the overall 'look' of cornsnakes. There have been many threads where members point out to others that their snake looks underweight or overweight, but I'm having a challenge deciding what overweight and underweight actually looks like when handling my corns.
I believe a past issue of JSAC talked about a cross-section of healthy corns looking like a slice of bread. This is a little tricky for me as well, as some of the pictures of corns I look at appear to have that body shape, but are called underweight.
Is it possible for someone to share some insight? Thanks so much :)
 
In an underweight corn, the slice of bread would have a point at the top where you can see the spine.

In an overweight corn, the slice of bread would looked stretched out sideways or even oval shaped.

Hope that helps some. :)
 
You can also tell an overweight corn by looking at their tails, close to the vent. There will be an obvious bulge before it tapers away. Oftentimes the positioning of the scales can help too: constantly stretched apart would indicate an overweight snake, and if the scales appear to be overlapping, that would obviously be a sign it was underweight.

I agree it's difficult to tell though. Mine is by anyone's definition overweight (he's ginormous in all respects though lol :|) and yet he's a picture of health and only fed one jumbe mouse fortnightly, if that.
 
Thanks for the little tidbits - I guess it's one of those things that will take practice. I will definately spend some time examining the scales of my boy - he's just huge (so was his mother), but I can still see a slight ridge on his back. He is fed well (definately 1.5 times the largest part of his body), and I even suppliment with rats for extra fat. Maybe he was just meant to be a super model :)
 
Tracee said:
Mine is by anyone's definition overweight (he's ginormous in all respects though lol :|) and yet he's a picture of health and only fed one jumbe mouse fortnightly, if that.
Click to expand...

I almost spent 32 years without ever hearing the word "fortnight" (or a variant of) spoken (or typed) in casual conversation.

Wow. I need to move to England. I wonder what other cool things I'm missing in the States.

Chris =)
 
CJBianco said:
I almost spent 32 years without ever hearing the word "fortnight" (or a variant of) spoken (or typed) in casual conversation.

Wow. I need to move to England. I wonder what other cool things I'm missing in the States.

Chris =)
Click to expand...
Umm, never thought about it before, but it's pretty common I think! "Fortnightly" might be a Traceeism.. :)

We have tons of marvellous wordage over here, particularly oop ere in ol' Yorkshire, where I hails from :)
 
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