# Snakes : feeding intervals



## Zincubus

Just wondering what you 'lot' all think about feeding intervals for your snakes ( not hatchlings as they're kinda different) .

I tend to feed my lot every 7 to 10 days or so , not written in stone .

I also have a couple of Albino Royal Pythons who only eat every two weeks for some reason .

My adult Snow Boa gets fed every three weeks give or take a day or so .


I know many /some overfeed their adult Boas but I was just reading about a bloke who's been feeding his adult Boa every 10 to 12 WEEKS , his vet reckons it's in perfect condition and health .

I sometimes leave my adult Snow Boa three weeks but THREE months !?

Any thoughts ?



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## wilkinss77

I feed all of mine every Sunday, unless they are in blue or fasting for some reason. I reckon every 3 months is far too long, as even in the wild they'd find prey more often than that.


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## Paul F

You'll obviously get loads of different answers to this one! :lol2:

Adult colubrids, every 7 to 10 days, give or take. I do tend to guess when I fed last. :blush:
I also generally feed smaller items than the "recommended" sizes I often see written on forums. A varied diet is fine, if not preferred, but when I see people writing "my corn is on size X rats" I often think "Woah, way too much!":gasp:


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## Malc

Adult Royals - small rat every 14-16 days
Adult boa - xl rat every 21-25 days


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## Oh How Original

I think once a month is long enough for a big Boa.
Still like adult Royals/colubrids would be between 7-14 days depending on the size of prey item.
It does depend on the animal though, some will only take a smaller meal so it's best to feed smaller and more often.
Some seem to prefer to hammer something big, so leave a bigger gap.
I saw the 3 month thing too and thought that was too long to be waiting and really there is nothing for the snake to gain from it, the only thing is the owner will save money on buying rats.
I know some adult retics/burms that eat every 2 months or so, but they are smashing rabbits which take a while to digest.
I guess it's personal preference and an overfed fatty snake is probably just as unhealthy as an underweight practically starved snake.
3 months does sound long, but it's probably to save a few quid on rats to be honest.
Hence the reason shops often feed smaller than they should.


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## danl

An overfed snake is far more unhealthy than a slightly underfed one. Seen all too many burms (especially burms) in the past that were obviously fat. 

As for my animals I tend to feed about every 9 days give or take. That is mostly colubrids and small pythons.


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## Mallythebeast

My corn is fed weekly, every Friday. She is fed one medium mouse or two small mice and she will be two and a half in December. 

I agree that you'd get many different answers, as all snakes are different!


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## richardhind

Boas have a slower metabolism so my oldest boas are 3-4wks on xl rats and my oldest is 11 and always been healthy and nice and square ,it depends on the feed item on my other boas, my 3 yr olds on medium rats are 2-3wk and the ones on small rats are 10-14days, my small ones are all weekly, but agree colubrids are different

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## Scarpa

My old male carpet python often used to go off his food for 10-12 weeks every Jan. I'd say that most boas and pythons could do with having a couple of longer gaps in their feeding each year, as it allows stored fat to be utilised. You see some horrible fat deposits around the internal organs of many captive reptiles.


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## Tarron

I feed when I remember, usually instigated by the behaviour of my snake. I don't keep feeding records or monitor it too much. I feed varying size prey depending on what I blind grab from the freezer at the time.

This allows me to maintain as pseudorandom a feeding schedule as possible, snake led rather than what I determine to be right.


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## Helvetica

So my routine is roughly every 2 weeks. The male hoggy will fast himself when he fancies it and I’m not fussed if he goes off meals. But mine all get 3-4 months of hibernation to contend with, and while they don’t use a lot of energy during this time they come out of it with one hell of an appetite. The first mouse always gets smashed. 
2-3 weeks seems the majority consensus for most adult snakes. 



Regarding the point that snakes will find prey more regularly than every 3 months in the wild I would tend to agree. However, there is a lot more energy exerted in foraging for wild snakes and not every prey item will successfully be caught by a wild snake. 
This is one of the reasons captive animals are so prone to obesity. As a consequence I will on occasion scent areas of vivs with a frozen mouse and pop it back in the freezer. Then all the little heads poke out and there’s at least some semblance of a “failed” hunt before they all curl up and snooze. 


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## Swindinian

Interesting topic to bring back up.

Extending the topic discussion. ……

It is widely claimed that colubrids have a faster metabolism than boids. Associated with this notion is that they require more regular meals, are more active etc etc.

My question relates to metabolism and life expectancy.

Normally a faster metabolism equates to a shorter life expectancy.

Does this correspond with colubrids and boids?

I am interested especially in corn/rat snakes, rainbow boas, Antaresia and Jungle carpet pythons.

I am expecting my corns to live longer than my rainbow boas?


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## ian14

Swindinian said:


> Interesting topic to bring back up.
> 
> Extending the topic discussion. ……
> 
> It is widely claimed that colubrids have a faster metabolism than boids. Associated with this notion is that they require more regular meals, are more active etc etc.
> 
> My question relates to metabolism and life expectancy.
> 
> Normally a faster metabolism equates to a shorter life expectancy.
> 
> Does this correspond with colubrids and boids?
> 
> I am interested especially in corn/rat snakes, rainbow boas, Antaresia and Jungle carpet pythons.
> 
> I am expecting my corns to live longer than my rainbow boas?


I would expect life expectancy between corns and rainbows to be similar. They are slender and active hunters. 
I honestly think that you are over thinking things.
Snakes have been kept in captivity for a very long time. The general needs are therefore very well documented, including diet and feeding frequency.
It does come across at the moment that you want to ignore accepted husbandry guidance and do your own thing?
Keeping tarantulas is very different to keeping snakes.


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## ian14

Mate, I really dont understand your problem with what I am saying!
More than happy to have a proper adult chat, if you want to pm me your number I'm happy to have an actual human to human conversation


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## Elly66

I feed weekly, always have with corns and now doing so with my young Royal. I don't feed if they're blue. I find they'll sometimes refuse a feed, so they choose. 

Adult corns get a 30 - 40g weaner rat. My Royal is still growing so prey still getting bigger. How it feeds once an adult, I'll wait and see.

The one corn I had that I can safely age (others have been rescues) lived for 25yrs. Specialist reptile vet, whom mainly looks after them for several zoos, was very impressed, especially when the only time it was ill was leading up to it's death, when a lump developed and I contacted said vet.


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## Malc

The way I see it is that keeping snakes in captivity the snake don't fully replicate their natural behaviour in the wild. No matter how much enrichment is placed in the enclosure, most snakes are lazy and opt to spend hours and hours in one place only to move to or away from the heat and repeat. They may spend a few hours being active at some parts of the day (or night) but on the whole don't use up a lot of energy as if they would doing this in the wild. We also feed high protein and fat content in the form of commercially produced rodents for food. My guess is that a wild caught rat in the snakes natural habitat would be smaller and have less fat content than any commercially produced rodent. For these reason I feed sparingly. My big boa now has a large ex layer quail every 14 days. His body shape is nicely toned and proportioned. He would gladly eat two or three per sitting, but given the environment he is in he would not burn off the energy such a meal would produce.

In terms of age. I had a royal live to 21 years before an infection form an abscess and adverse reaction to the treatment caused his death. He was fed every two weeks on a single large weaner rat or two large mice, or a single russian hamster. Kept in a 48" x 15" x 15" viv on a heat mat for most of his life...How that compares to a wild specimen I have no idea. There was a report a while back where a female royal in a zoo dropped a clutch of eggs at the age of 62 years, so it's quite possible that captivity (in zoos at least) has little effect on the life span of the snake. 

From internet searches the heart rate for most species of snakes are very close, with both Cornsnakes and Common boa's having 55-58 bpm. Yet most boa's will outlive a cornsnake by some time. I did find this paper which some may find interesting


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## Thrasops

You could almost write a book on this subject and still have lots left to say.

There is so much to take into account before we even begin to suggest hard and fast rules - remember snakes are incredibly diverse and have varying modes of life and metabolism. There is a lot to take in.

What species of snake is it? A sedentary ambush hunter, active forager, or fast moving, sight hunting pursuit hunter? They will not have the same requirements, digestion times, prey intake, thermal preferences etc.

How often are you feeding them?

_What_ are you feeding them? Type of prey? Size of prey? Little and often or big meals irregularly? It is a safe bet to say a small active lizard or frog feeder could eat small lizards or frogs most days and remain healthy, and get fat very quickly if fed lab mice at the same frequency.

How old is the snake? Juvenile animals feed at higher frequency, adults can take larger prey and are generally safer basking at higher temperatures to metabolise it.

What sex is the snake? Males might not eat at all during breeding season, females might not eat whilst gravid - both could well gorge themselves at a high rate for a season after breeding/ laying.

Is the snake gravid/ not gravid?

What season is it?

Is the snake allowed to brumate yearly or is it kept active all year long? Snakes that brumate (where appropriate) demonstrate longer lifespans and improved fertility, and will have been able to live off fat reserves that may still be present if not allowed to brumate.

What temperatures do they have available for them to thermoregulate at? Snakes metabolise faster at higher temperatures. They also prefer higher temperatures after eating (postprandial) compared to before eating (preprandial) - do they have access to a range of temperatures? Do they have a thermal gradient or one constant temperature?

Do they have space to burn off excess calories by moving and climbing or are they in an enclosure with limited opportunity to exercise?

You see? There are a _huge_ number of interlocking factors that we don't fully understand at play. We are not going to hang around and say that in the wild, a snake will restrict itself to 'only' eating every seven or ten days because it just is not true - snakes eat what they can get when they can get it, and it affects their behaviour, growth and reproductive ability _greatly_. But then... captive snakes are not in the wild, they are not subject to the same variety of conditions and pressures.

We have records of pythons being found with three deer inside them (for example one 14ft Burmese Python killed in the Florida Everglades was found to contain an adult white-tailed deer estimated to weigh around 100lbs, and also two fawns estimated at about 28 and 38lbs). Wild Retics are also known to have eaten _bears_ and _tigers - _yet no wild Retic will look like the fat blimps you see in captive collections despite the potential to take larger prey, why is this?

We have records of Gopher snakes being found with up to 35 prey items inside them at a time.

We have records of some snakes eating daily during their active season (water snakes, Coachwhips etc).

We have field studies of Corn snakes and Black rat snakes showing food passage time is 3-4 days, but that (Black rat snakes) ate on average 37 times in one active season (about seven months), with each prey item being around 20% of the snake's mass - and animals that had recently eaten being more likely to be basking at higher temperatures. Example prey animals were chipmunks (_Tamias striatus_), Meadow voles (_Microtus pennsylvanicus_) and Deer mice (_Peromyscus maniculatus_).

We know prey availability affects feeding rates and reproductive rates of snakes.

We also know that many snakes prefer a 'little but often' feeding strategy than 'one big meal that lasts for ages' although of course this varies by species. But there certainly would be reasons for this (digesting a large meal over a prolonged period will negatively affect fitness).

What can we take from this information?


My personal view is that husbandry is a completely interconnected affair and no one aspect by itself works individually. Hence other threads I have made talking about 'the left wing basics' of care such as offering a larger thermal gradient, UV, nightly and seasonal drops where appropriate, wet and dry seasons where appropriate, taking reproduction into account, brumation, ensuring the animals have space to exercise, climb and move, substrate to burrow around in, and so on. Taking all that into account:

I feed my Coachwhips several meals a week and still struggle to put weight back onto females after they have laid. I feel they could eat mice every day and remain healthy, but then, they digest and poop within 8-12 hours of eating. And we know from field ecology that they forage daily for around 4 hours a day at least for the warmer parts of the year.

I feed juvenile snakes with higher metabolisms every 4-7 days (4 days for things like _Psammophis_, whip snakes, active tree snakes, 7 days for small rat snakes or king snakes). I tend to use vitamin supplements for baby snakes too, especially those taking pinks as a majority of the prey. Although I will occasionally add it to the food of all my animals.

I feed adult _Psammophis_ and active tree snakes like Flying snakes or _Thrasops_ every 7 days.

I feed adult rat snakes every 7-14 days depending on what species, what time of year and how old.

I feed most adult pythons and boas every 14 days or more.

I feed senior animals over 20 years old less than younger animals. They seem to metabolise a lot more slowly and get by with less. But they also tend to take larger prey by dint of the fact they are larger and usually at the top percentile of possible size.

I _heavily_ vary both type (quail or hen eggs, day old chicks, lab mice, spiny mice, rats, hamsters, gerbils, quail chicks, baby rabbits, baby guinea pigs, etc) and number/ age of prey (one day I may offer a handful of pink mice, another day a small rat, the next feed some eggs or a chick). If the snakes will eat fish I offer fish, or frogs legs.

I try not to keep to any particular regimen but with the number of animals I have I tend to feed in batches, usually determined by metabolism and age. I tend to observe the animals, and record when they have pooped. If I see them out and active and obviously roving looking for food, I will make sure to feed them within a day or two if not then and there - almost all of my snakes now will tell me when they want food, and I do not say that in some vague wishy-washy way, most of them will come right up to the glass when I am around and 'beg' to tell me they are hungry. (As with any animal you don't want to feed them whenever they decide they want to though).

I also skip every fourth meal for most species (not _Psammophis_, whip snakes or _Ptyas_).

If a male has been off food during the breeding season (which can last a few months in some species) - I give him the chance to recuperate his fat reserves over the summer months. Likewise, if a female has laid I make sure she eats small rations regularly for a month or two - one adult mouse every three days for example.

As I constantly nag, I keep all my snakes in enclosures at least as long as they are, with facilities to lift their whole body off the ground. This, combined with nightly temperature cycles and lighting regimes, encourages them to move around over a 24 hour period.

I brumate all snakes that would brumate, I cool subtropical snakes. Brumated animals get no food and the fasting period allows them to work off excess fat. Cooled animals undergo lower prey intake and likewise this period helps regulate their metabolism.

By and large, I observe my animals grow a lot more slowly than those of many other people, and reach sexual maturity later - it is not uncommon for my rat snakes to only start breeding at their 6th or 7th year. I see many people show animals at adult size at around two years old whereas mine are still quite small. This used to worry me a lot - until it didn't; my animals grow at their rate, they get there eventually and they live long lives (around 30% of my collection is now about 20 years old and another 30% is over 15. I have rat snakes that I purchased around 1995 and 1998 still breeding).

That's a lot of waffle to say - 'I don't think there is any one right way, exactly.'

I _do_ personally think obesity is very common in the hobby, I see a _lot_ of fat snakes - but I am not sure this is solely because of the diet but rather also because they don't get a chance to move much and are kept either at temperatures that are too uniform, or too low. I think a snake eating a little too much is probably more of a health risk than a snake that eats a little too little - but I also don't think we need to underfeed our animals if we are keeping them properly.


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## LiasisUK

Swindinian said:


> Interesting topic to bring back up.
> 
> Extending the topic discussion. ……
> 
> It is widely claimed that colubrids have a faster metabolism than boids. Associated with this notion is that they require more regular meals, are more active etc etc.
> 
> My question relates to metabolism and life expectancy.
> 
> Normally a faster metabolism equates to a shorter life expectancy.
> 
> Does this correspond with colubrids and boids?
> 
> I am interested especially in corn/rat snakes, rainbow boas, Antaresia and Jungle carpet pythons.
> 
> I am expecting my corns to live longer than my rainbow boas?



Boas and pythons live a lot longer than colubrids. Some boas have been known to live 60 years, pythons 50. Colubrids are lucky to get to 20.


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## Swindinian

ian14 said:


> I would expect life expectancy between corns and rainbows to be similar. They are slender and active hunters.
> I honestly think that you are over thinking things.
> Snakes have been kept in captivity for a very long time. The general needs are therefore very well documented, including diet and feeding frequency.
> It does come across at the moment that you want to ignore accepted husbandry guidance and do your own thing?
> Keeping tarantulas is very different to keeping snakes.


Hi Ian,

I am afraid your comments were not well received at the time. I took them as talking down to me, rather than engaging on the subject matter.

That said, this topic has blossomed with some great commentary, and really useful insights to draw from.

I would argue that there are a lot of discrepancies and inconsistencies in this hobby, so I kind of agree to differ on the accepted husbandry guidance.

On the personal commentary of me, I do have a propensity to over complicate matters. Like all attributes, that can be a benefit in some circumstances and a hindrance in others.

A bit of background on me, and something that often comes back to my thoughts; 
Obesity in an adult female corn snake I kept as a teenager during 1990s.

I bought an unrelated pair of gorgeous normal corn snakes in the early nineties from an entomology show, Pattishall village(?) in East Midlands.
I raised them, as per accepted guidance, approx 1 mouse per week as adults and yet the female developed obesity. Sometimes, the male would abstain feeding, so occasionally the female would get seconds, if I didn’t share rejected food with royal pythons, or Peruvian centipedes, or occasionally gravid spiders.

On reflection, I think the corn snake setups and heating may have contributed to rather cool continuous heat environment, and sedentary existence (as alluded to in Francis’ & Malcs’ comments).

She developed a large amount of fatty deposits at her posterior, and the ‘taper’ pre cloaca to tail was frankly horrendous 😔
I didn’t confirm it wasn’t normal until it was too late.
I was really rather ashamed that I had allowed this to occur. 

I also paired them hoping the female would divert some reserves to egg production. However the result was partial egg binding after laying 13 ish eggs, she retained at least 3. Memorable trips to the vets, for an x-ray and calcium injections in between A level exams was certainly an experience. 
I was relieved she passed all eggs, though never lost the fatty deformity.

I have probably been keeping snakes as long as I had been keeping theraphosids (and many other inverts), however, I have been keeping aquariums for way longer still. So I do draw from a range of ectothermic animal husbandry experiences, not just spiders, which I ceased keeping maybe 12 years ago.

As previously intimated, Amber my CB20 corn snake, is not currently on fortnightly feeds, but I was trialling that last winter. If this approach leads her to mature at 4 years, that is not a detractor for me, as long as she remains healthy.
My desire, is that if I allow Amber to grow and develop more slowly, but to keep her fit and healthy, then she will still be with me into my retirement (if that is still a thing in future).

Andy


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## John Hufton

Cribos - twice a week. Kingsnake once a week, big boa once a month.


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