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Weight gain

Asphalt_World

New member
Hi, are any of you able to post weight gain stats for any of your corns?

I'm roughly following the Munson guide and one of mine has gone from 14g on the 4th November to 90g this week!!!!!

The snake has excellent definition on the body with no sign whatsoever of being cylindrical/overweight.

Darwin is very active between feeds and looks brilliant. It just seems an very fast growth rate.
 
I got mine in July. He was 3 weeks old at the time and is 9 months old now. I began weighing him each month beginning in September, when I noticed that 1 pinkie every 5 days wasn't going to be enough anymore.

9/19/15: 22 grams. He'd have been 3 months old at this point, and I moved him from one pinkie every 5 days to 2 pinkies every 5 days.

10/27/15: 28 grams (+6). I moved him from 2 pinkies every 5 days to 1 fuzzy every 6 days

11/28/15: 38 grams (+10)

12/28/15: 56 grams (+18!). About 2 weeks later, I moved from 1 fuzzy every 6 days to a fuzzy and a pinkie every 6 days.

1/31/16: 64 grams (+9). About 3 weeks after this, I moved him onto 1 10gram hopper every 7 days, which is where he's currently at

3/5/16: 80 grams (+16)
 
And yeah, as I reread your post, the kind of weight gain you are talking about seems way over the top. It will be interesting to see what others say.
 
Rufus was about 22 inches long and weighed about 60 grams when I got him. He was about 3 months old. I have had him now about 11 months. He is a little over 1 year old and he now measures 33 inches long and weighs about 180 grams.

I weigh him and his meals. When he was younger he was retaining about 40% of the feeder weight, gaining about 3 grams per week from feeders that weighed 7 to 9 grams each.

He currently is eating mice in the 19 to 22 gram range and gaining about 4 grams per week which means he is retaining about 16% to 18% of the feeder weight.

They tend to grow faster as babies and slow down as they get older. Rufus is not a Baby, but I'd classify him now as a young adult or adolescent. Eventually, their growth will become hardly measurable and you'll simply maintain a steady weight, or should try to to prevent them from getting fat.
 
Hi, I'm also watching our young corn (Audrey) progress well and coincidentally also got her in early November, at around 8g weight. I've been lurking as a non-contributing reader on this forum for a while (sorry to be shy folks!), but my day job is as a scientist (an animal physiologist) so in addition to a fascination with my newish pet, I love monitoring stats and modeling things and have kept very careful records. She's a well monitored snake :)

At present my girl (I think she is a girl) is ~45g, so only about half the weight of yours. But her smaller starting point is significant: she took her first month to reach the 14g yours started at. .

Several factors will determine growth rate, obviously all limited by the rate and size of prey you feed your snake, since in captivity they are not free to feed at will, but get their nutritional intake at the rate we set for them. One of these factors will be genes (including his/her sex): some snakes (like humans!) will just grow more slowly than others despite an identical diet and may end up as smaller adults. There is not necessarily a 'right' value. But other factors can also make a difference: since snakes are ectotherms (they get most of their body heat from their environment), tank temperatures will affect both their metabolic rate as well as their digestive efficiency. These in turn will affect how much energy they use between feeds (weight loss) and how much they gain from each feed. Nutritional quality of the prey can also vary.

Having read the advice of many others on these pages, I've been following slightly less aggressive intervals than the 5-6 days that the Munson plan suggests for this size range (e.g. I've been giving 6-7 days between feeds, and a few times I've skipped a feed when she's been in blue). She has been gaining a very steady 31% of the prey weight at each feed. If you've been using shorter intervals (as per Munson) you could expect the average % gain from each feed to be higher. As Karl notes above, some folk report weight gains in young snakes of around 40% of the fed prey weight, but less in near-adults that are typically fed prey that are a smaller % of their body size and at longer intervals.

If you model Munson plan feeding at the slightly less aggressive end of the range suggested (i.e. assuming mid size prey for each of the stages and using 6 day intervals) a snake starting at 14g in early November would grow to around 68g over the ~135 days if you assume it retains ~30% of the feeder weight (as does my snake). This would be more like 92g if it retains 40% of the feeder weight (as per Karl's Rufus). Hence while your 90g is at the upper end of the range, it doesn't seem very surprising if you are following the Munson plan.
 
My Cleo is just shy of 7 months and I'm feeding a modified to be less agressive Munson plan. She's missed some feedings due to my recent travels and few long-ish sheds as well. So she was 45 grams before her last feeding on March 16. I'm aiming for around 100 grams at a year I think. She was 14 grams when I got her on October 10 and her hatch date is August 28, 2015. Her last fuzzy was just over 6 grams.
 
Audrey's weight/length at approx. 1 month intervals:

11/14/15: 8.0 g 33.2 cm
12/07/15: 12.6 g 37.1 cm (+4.6 g / 3.9 cm) (single pinkies)
01/13/16: 21.5 g 44.3 cm (+8.9 g / 7.2 cm) (transition to 2x 2-2.5g pinkies during this time)
02/10/16: 33.4 g 50.7 cm (+11.9 g / 6.4 cm) (double pinkies)
03/15/16: 42.9 g 57.1 cm (+9.5 g / 6.4 cm) (transitioned to 7.5/8g rat pinkies)
 
Asphalt:
What was he eating at 14g and what is he eating now? Also, how many days did you wait in between feedings? Between you and Karl's 60g 3 month old, I'm wondering if I'm underfeeding my snake.
 
I roughly followed the Munson guide although using the longer option on days between feeds. In other words, if it said every 6-7 days, I normally went for 7 days.
 
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