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A forum newcomer looking for feeding schedule advice?

Magelet

Magelet

New member
Hi everyone! I've been a lurker to the forum ever since I got my gorgeous cornsnake Levi (short for Leviathan). He's been doing great and I feel like I've been a very doting snake momma for the two years I've raised him, but now I'm beginning to question his feeding schedule.

I do not know his exact age as I got him from a pet store as a baby. I'm assuming he had to be a few months old to have even been at the pet store, so my closest guess is Levi should be around two years old and is about 3 1/2-4 foot long at this point.

I just upgraded him to small sized rats and watched him carefully during his feeding. He took it slow but had no problems as far as I could see. I've kept him on a weekly feeding schedule ever since I got him and he actually anticipates his feeding day by coming out of his fake rock home and watching me until I take him out to put him in his feeding box.

I've read in some places that, by the time they hit around 2 years old their feeding schedule can be spread out a little more, say 12-14 days. My concern is I don't want to starve Levi, but he very obviously expects his weekly feeding. He even gets grumpy with me by rattling his tail if I go too long without feeding him.

Is drawing his feeding schedule out absolutely necessary? Or should I continue his weekly feeding? I know older snakes don't need to be fed as often, so how will I know when to extend his feeding schedule?

All help and advice is greatly appreciated!
Perhaps I'll even get a pic of my snake baby up for everyone to see.

-Laura
 
I'm not sure off hand. I don't have anything proper to weigh him on and I'm pretty sure a human scale won't work.
 
Once mine reach adult size, they go to one large mouse every 14 days. Sometimes this needs tweaking so that they're fed every 10 or 21 days if their weight's not what I'd like.

Bear in mind that you need to avoid feeding your babe on demand. Nature programmes him to seek food when he's not digesting as in the wild, he could hunt possibly for weeks at a time and find nothing. Honestly, once they become established feeders, most Corns are eating machines and will stuff as much food as you give them. That doesn't mean that they actually *need* to eat - just that their instinct tells them to.
 
Unless there's a good reason you're feeding him rats, it would probably be better to switch over to adult mice.

Rats are quite a bit higher in fat content than mice (and unless you're raising them yourself, quite a bit more expensive too).

As for weighing him (which is really the best method of tracking his growth/maintenance), I use a digital postal scale (goes from 1 gram to like 15 pounds). You can get them online or from office depot or the like for about 20 bucks or so.
 
Unless he was power fed, a 4 foot corn is over 2 years old. I agree that rats are never needed for a corn snake. Post a picture of him, and we'll tell you how he looks. It is easy to get adult snakes fat.
 
Pictures. I took this maybe a month or so after I got him.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v39/Magelet/DSCF3306.jpg

These I took just today.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v39/Magelet/DSC00904.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v39/Magelet/DSC00905.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v39/Magelet/DSC00906.jpg

Wow, I'm really glad I posted about this. I was unaware of the fat content of rats and I should have assumed, like any animal, you can make a snake obese! I've only fed him that one small rat thinking I could upgrade the size of his food, so I will definitely be running back out to stock up on adult sized mice once again.

Soulwind reminded me that I did have a Stamps.com digital scale stored away, so I broke that baby out and used it to weigh Levi. He is 11.8 oz. and doing a proper measurement (instead of guessing), 3.3 feet long.
 
Honestly, not too bad. I would wean him over to smaller mice, I'd guess he's in the 30 inch 250 gram range from the photo. But before you take my guess to heart for making a feeding schedule, I'd weigh him -I guess weights about as well as morph compounds! :laugh:
 
Well 11.8oz is 334g (for our metric Corn audience!), which would be about right for an adult Corn. Looks OK to me as well and not out of proportion, but he seems to have hit roughly adult size about a year early as they usually get there around three years old (although this is never set in stone - some get there earlier and others later).

I'd think his feeding could be safely taken down to one adult mice once every 10 days, and see what happens. You can always tweak that if necessary in a few months. It's easier to put muscle back on a lean Corn, than it is to shift fat off a flabby one! Now that he's hit adult size, he'll be more likely to spread outwards than lengthwise if he's fed at his current rate.
 
Oh good! I'm glad I didn't wind up making him a little fatty. o.0 I'll scale him back to adult mice and stretch his feeding out to 10 days instead of 7 and see how that goes. Really glad Levi still looks healthy, and I thank you all for the advice to keep him that way!
 
you can take him to kinko, office depo or the like and have it weighed there. Here is how my brother does it goes into establishment with empty box has it weighed goes out to the car put snake in the box and go weigh it again. He is actually banned from the post office when the head of his ball python popped out of the box top and rattled the staff. write the box weight on the box so all you have to do for future weigh in is put the snake in the box and take him to be weighed. I do mine on small digital for babies larger snakes go to my office to be weighed on the package scale.
 
Rats vs Mice

Rats are quite a bit higher in fat content than mice
Click to expand...

This is pretty subjective, so I thought I would put in some numbers. A study published in 2002 gave the % fat content for various prey items used in zoos.

Mice over 10g in weight were estimated to be 23.6% fat
Rats in the 10-50g weight range were estimated to be 27.5% fat
Raters under 10g were at 23.7% fat

The difference in fat percentages for the prey items you're feeding is 3.9%. IMO, I would not call that "quite a bit higher", but you might.

You can read the entire study here in .pdf format.

There are other things such as kcal/g. This actually shows that juvenile rats are slightly higher at 5.55 kcal.g than adult mice (5.25 kcal/g)


Again, in my humble opinion, at the end of the day, it really is probably a wash on what type of prey item you use. I think it is the weight of the prey item compared to the weight of the snake that matters.

As for that ratio, maybe 10% every 2 weeks, or 5% once a week. That is a 350g snake gets a 35g mouse or rat every 2 weeks.
 
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