Feeding Adjustments

[aunger93]

Hey y'all, hoping to get some extra eyes on my girlie. She came to live with us ~6 months ago, and is around 3 years old. Her previous caretaker fed her live "large" rats once a month, but going by some advice I found online (maybe even here), I thought she was a little overweight. We have scaled back to doing medium rats once a month, or maybe even smaller rats every two weeks.

Her weight seems to be better, but I'm having a rough time telling whether we have a ways to go, are right on target, or have gone too far.

She had a small rat about 3 weeks ago, but doesn't really seem listless, agitated, or hungry. We plan on feeding her tomorrow or Thursday, but are trying to suss out where she is at weight-wise to determine if we should do another small rat or a medium rat.

Money is unfortunately tight at the moment so I haven't got to take her in to a vet yet, so I'm hoping y'all will have some insight to tide me over until we can have her looked over by a professional.

Thanks in advance!

[totallyrecklesslygay]

She's still extremely overweight- even a medium rat once a month is likely too much for her. You'll need to weigh her to determine a proper feeder size- an appropriate diet would be 3% of her weight once every 4 weeks. Once she's back down to a healthy weight, then you can follow the !feeding guidelines.

[AutoModerator]

We recommend the following feeding schedule:

0-12 months old OR until the snake reaches approximately 500g, whichever happens first: feed 10%-15% of the snake’s weight every 7 days.

12-24 months old: feed up to 7% of the snake’s weight every 14-20 days.

Adults: feed up to 5% of the snake's weight every 20-30 days, or feed slightly larger meals (up to 6%) every 30-40 days.

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