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Not growing. Should I be worried?

albertagirl

albertagirl

Sharan
From what I can tell from doing searches here, different snakes grow at different rates, and that's normal, also feeding affects growth rates. But is it normal to see periods where your snake doesn't grow at all? I have three hatchlings between 3 and 4 months old, and only one of them seems to be growing. I wasn't too worried about it (yet) until I saw another post where someone mentioned that only gaining one ounce in 4 weeks was not good.

Over the past 2.5 months (11 weeks), one baby has put on roughly one gram per week. She was 10 grams when I got her, and is 19 grams now, visibly growing! But my other baby that I got at the same time was 7 grams and was putting on half a gram per week. I figured as she got bigger, and was eating bigger pinkies, her growth would speed up to match my bigger baby, but once she got to 12 grams, she just stopped. For the past 4 weeks, she hasn't gained at all. My third baby was 11 grams when I got her a month ago, and has also only gained one gram in 4 weeks.

Should I be worried? I'm feeding one pinkie every 5 days, and none of the babies has ever refused a meal. All are equally active, look healthy, and shedding normally every 4-6 weeks.

My scale only shows full grams, so maybe they've gained a little, but compared to the growth of my bigger girl, it seems insufficient. I have ordered a scale that shows tenths of grams as I'm seeing the value of that, but in the meantime I feel like I should still have seen more growth in the 2 little ones. What do you think?
 
Try to find a digital scale that had an accuracy of plus or minus 0.1gram. Some scales that only read out to the nearest gram can be as inaccurate as plus or minus 2 grams.

This sticky from Nanci's forum should guide you in finding such a scale.

http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128818

If you want to be super accurate, you can even get calibration weights found within the links Nanci used in her post above.

As for weight gain and growth, it will vary. I've got corns from Nanci and a few others on here that have roughly the same hatch date as some of my holdbacks from last year. They all vary in size and prey items. Some are larger, some and smaller, some are still on large pinks 2 times a week, and others are on fuzzies once a week, while a couple are just about to fuzzies twice a week. All set up the same, and all were on the same feed schedule.

Another example: I have some desert kingsnakes (Lampropeltis getula splendida) that I collected last season. One has packed on its weight via growing in length, while the other has packed on weight by getting thicker.

Genetics is a funny thing, shoot a human example would even be me. I have family members on my father's side that are all 5'9" or taller, including the women (former aunts, uncle, and grandparents as my parents are divorced), with my uncle around 6'3" or 6'4". For the most part, I ate well growing up, especially so during high school where I was on the cross country team all 4 years (i.e., I had to eat well). On the contrary, my mother's side of the family is short; my great grandmother was 4'11", not sure about great grandpa maybe 5'8", grandparents are 5'2" and 5'6", my mom is 5'2" or 5'3", and my sister is the same age. Me, I'm a little over 5'6". Again, genetics is a funny thing.
 
Thank you for your reply, so it sounds like I am ok to not worry for now? I do have a better scale on the way. I wasn't worried at all with one baby growing at half the rate of the other, but to completely stop growing seemed odd. Hopefully you're right and it's just inaccuracy of the scale. I'll leave it a few more weeks with the new scale, once it arrives, and see if I can get a more clear picture.
 
Good grief, no kidding inaccurate scale! I weighed her a week ago at 12 grams, and weighed her today at 15. Either she's been drinking a LOT of water, or air has calories. I did feed her once since then, but there's no way that whole pinkie is still in her, and it wasn't even 3 grams. I can't wait until my new scale gets here!!!
 
Sometimes if I get a reading that seems 'off', I will rearrange the container and set it back to zero (because my scale is finicky about having the container right in the middle), and re-weigh the snake.
 
Not saying this is the case for you, but if you have an accurate scale that weighs in tenths of grams, an unexpected big weight gain like that can signal that the snake is blue and hasn't pooped.
 
hypnoctopus said:
Sometimes if I get a reading that seems 'off', I will rearrange the container and set it back to zero (because my scale is finicky about having the container right in the middle), and re-weigh the snake.
Click to expand...

I suspect I should have done that on her last week's weighing. What she actually weighed was 12 grams 5 weeks ago, 13 grams 3 weeks ago, and then back to 12 grams last week. And this week 15 grams. Probably last week she was actually 14, but weighed wrong.

Nanci, she pooped (almost on me) either right before or right after I weighed her, but I do expect her to go blue in the next week or two. I'll keep that in mind for future!

Thank you both. Hopefully my new scale will arrive soon and I can be a little more accurate with my record keeping. :)
 
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