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How many pinks before a fuzz?

I know I messed up with Fluffy!!! Why the **** am I getting accused of being a bad person and a liar. I have ****ed up and I am tiered of being. I am improving my ways with the advice of some people and others are just discouraging me from even coming to this site. I try to seek advice and yet I get accused of being a killer, a liar, and that I don't care about my animals. I care about my animals more tham some of youe people. Me and my sister saved a calico cat and 10 chocolate lab puppies that all had worms. I do care about my animals and I would never purposly kill them.
 
reptile_addict said:
I know I messed up with Fluffy!!! Why the **** am I getting accused of being a bad person and a liar. I have ****ed up and I am tiered of being. I am improving my ways with the advice of some people and others are just discouraging me from even coming to this site. I try to seek advice and yet I get accused of being a killer, a liar, and that I don't care about my animals. I care about my animals more tham some of youe people. Me and my sister saved a calico cat and 10 chocolate lab puppies that all had worms. I do care about my animals and I would never purposly kill them.
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Junior,

You really shouldn't be giving out any advice, period. You should shut up and observe and absorb the knowledge here. Maybe in a few years you'll learn enough to help a rookie out but until then why don't you just learn, quietly.
 
Hectorthesnake said:
I did read the Fluffy thing...It made me sad...k..And thank you..<3 I can't really hold hector now...he had escaped and is now all beetchy. But he's getting less and less aggresive.

He is acting like he wants more...But I'll finish off the pinkies that I have now, and then move onto a small fuzzy, or maybe two pinkies...Thank you..
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But do you think it is my fault
 
Eh..

Yes, I do think it is your fault. Because with the house snake....you should've bought a tank thing for it....because you said you weren't going to put your snakes together but you did....And of course it would've escaped...x_x

:shrugs:
 
Hectorthesnake said:
Do you think that Hector is too small?
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I know Mangrove said it was probably ok to move up to a fuzzy...and it very well could be BUT there's no way to tell by this picture because there is no reference to his size. Just go by the width at the thickest part of his body. Corns' skin is very elastic, so even if YOU think a fuzzy is too big for him, as long as it's within the "body width boundary" then it'll probably be ok.
 
Hectorthesnake said:
Thank you...n_n I'll give him a small fluffy and then work up to the larger ones.
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Just don't handle him for a couple days after you feed him, and if he keeps it down, you're good to go. I'm not telling you it's definately ok to feed him a fuzzy....I was just telling you that your picture isn't a good way to tell because there's no reference to the size. What you could try though is to get a picture of your snake alongside whatever you're feeding him now to see how the size fits. Either that, or feed your snake what you normally feed him, then take a picture after he's finished so we can see the size of his bulge (um, is this getting into the territory of the "best snake pickup lines" or whatever it was in the Misc subforum? lol). But seriously, that'll give us a better idea of how big your snake is compared to its food. The length doesn't matter, but the width does.
 
Hectorthesnake said:
He is acting like he wants more...
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Just wondering, what constitutes as signs of "wanting more"?
Behavior such as tounge flicking after the rodent is down?

Latley I've been covering my feeding cages when I offer my snakes their mice and leaving them be for awhile. They've been getting one decent sized fuzzy a week and are about the width of my index finger.

Should I be observing them to look for post-meal hunger clues?

ps: I am a girl and my hands are somewhat small. (If that helps at all for size referance)
 
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GiantBlueberry said:
Just wondering, what constitutes as signs of "wanting more"?
Behavior such as tounge flicking after the rodent is down?

Latley I've been covering my feeding cages when I offer my snakes their mice and leaving them be for awhile. They've been getting one decent sized fuzzy a week and are about the width of my index finger.

Should I be observing them to look for post-meal hunger clues?

ps: I am a girl and my hands are somewhat small. (If that helps at all for size referance)
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Jessica,

It would depend more on the width of the snake. The easiest way to judge it to give it a prey item a little bigger that it widest mid-body girth (width).

If you snake wants more it will seem to be actively looking for more. If you move your finger on the outside of the tank after it has eaten one and it seems to want your finger, there is a good chance it will want another food item.
 
Exactly!

That's exactly what my snake does...Well...I wiggle my finger on the outside of the tank and he goes to it and sorta just stares at it...so I figured that meant he wanted more....But I wasn't sure..So I didn't want to feed it to him...and him get fat and have a heart attack...x_X
 
The feeding convention is one appropriate sized prey item per week. Appropritate = one prey item approximately equal in maximum width to the maximum width of the snake (the prey can be up to 25% larger in width). For young snakes, you can feed one appropriate sized prey item every 5 days to increase the rate of growth. When adult size is reached (approx. 3.5 feet for Corns) cut back to one appropriate sized prey item per week. Any more prey items or any more often gets into the realm of power feeding -- and that's a no no. :)
 
If the snake can eat/swallow a fuzzy, it will eat a fuzzy, otherwise it won't. It's that simple. If it won't eat the fuzzy, it won't eat the fuzzy. You get a fuzzy and try it, to see where you are at, so to speak.

I have hatchlings that have been eating fuzzies since 14 or 15 inches, often every 3, 4, or 5 days, sometimes less often. That's probably a reasonable minimum size for attempting a fuzzy. Maybe I don't know what the heck I'm talking about, but I do think there is something to the idea that baby animals eat more often, and this GRADUALLY changes (not jumping from eating every 7 days to every 14 days, for example.) Also, the idea of someone feeding a 20 inch snake 1 pinky per week seems absurd to me. Others have posted info about fuzzies being more nutritious than pinkies, so the effect of getting away from pinkies is beneficial in more ways than simply the mass/volume of food.

If you think your snake might be ready for a fuzzy (or even if you don't, and the snake is over 15 inches), try it. At most, you're out $1 or whatever you pay for the fuzzy. Try again in another month or 6 weeks, if your first attempt is unsuccessful (highly unlikely, based on my experiences.) Snakes haven't survived this long from lack of ability to eat without human supervision and intervention. They know what they can and can't handle.

Some wild Cornsnakes surely must eat BETTER in the wild (compared to their poor captive cousins), based on some posts I see. There are lizards and frogs all over my yard. Any wild snakes here would be fit and well-fed, not stunted and waiting 7 days for a single pinky. If food were that scarce, it is doubtful Corns would inhabit such a geographic region. Sure, they CAN go without food for weeks or subsist on meager rations, but I'm not sure that's what nature actually intended. They'd probably look for a different location with more food, after several weeks or months of hunger or meager little meals. Like I said, I have thousands of lizards and frogs in my yard here, and this is just a drop in the bucket. Anybody that thinks snakes can't find food in the woods (like we have in Florida, the Carolinas, etc.) hasn't been in the woods lately.
 
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