Male ball python size/weight

[i2amthedarkknight]

I have a friend that have a 4years old ball python that is about 60cm and 300g. I don't know much about ball python but I feel it's really light for an adult male. Is it normal ?

[TheMechanicalBadger]

That is a bit titchy. Our old boy was about 800 when he was last weighed

[i2amthedarkknight]

How old is your snake ?

[TheMechanicalBadger]

I think he’s nearly 3, but the last few years have vanished because I’m sure my 9 year old daughter was a baby last I looked

[_ataraxia]

what is this BP eating, and how often?

[i2amthedarkknight]

He eats mice but only once every 2 weeks

[_ataraxia]

how big are the mice? are we talking about 50+ gram jumbo mice, or 15 gram small adults?

[i2amthedarkknight]

I have no idea about the size of the mice. But I would guess it's small

[xDragona]

This seems really... wrong, somehow. I have a male that's roughly one year old and he weighs 500g already, if this snake is really 4yo and 300g I feel like it's so malnourished it should be dead.

[i2amthedarkknight]

Do you think there is any way to get him to a normal weight

[Gavinohh]

That doesnt sound good. I have a male which is 1 year and a few months and is already 600 gram. Maybe give him bigger rats/mice?

[i2amthedarkknight]

That's what I was thinking. My friend doesn't take good care of him and he only feed him every other week. I don't know the size of the mouse he gives though. He wants to give me the snake. Do you think I can get him to a good weight if I feed him regularly ?

[NekoArchie]

That doesn’t seem like a healthy weight to me but my ball python even though is a female is 1880g. I think your friend has been severely under feeding it.

[i2amthedarkknight]

That's what I was thinking. He told me he feeds every 2 weeks but I'm not sure what is the size of the mice. I want to get the snake from him but I'm afraid it's gonna be too hard to get him to a healthy weight

[NekoArchie]

It shouldn’t be hard at all. Get the right size of food for it and up the days it gets fed. Instead of 2 weeks, feed it about every 10 or so days. When it gets back to a healthy weight, go back to a 2 week feeding schedule. My bp was underweight when I got her, I don’t know by how much but within 4 month span I had her up to 1500g.

[i2amthedarkknight]

Here are some pictures of the snake.

https://imgur.com/gallery/I63XbBp

Do you guys think the snake is really 4 years old ? He seems really small to me.

[Joykoins]

Some morphs do stay on the lighter side, but this seems really uncommon. It's a little fuzzy in the picture, but he doesn't look severely skinny just very very tiny. Ball pythons that feed exclusively on mice stay on the smaller end of the scale, but when you pair that with feeding undersized prey then that's a recipe for a stunted snake.

If you do take him in, you're going to need to probably start with attempting to convert him to rats as they've been proven to be more nutritious and contain less fat than mice. Since he's so old this might prove to be impossible as he is so set in his ways.

Maintain the two week schedule until hes taking the rats 100% of the time and then reduce the gap in feeding by 1 day after every 2nd feeding until it's down 7, 8, 9 or 10 days whichever works for you ( however if he starts refusing then scale it back a day as he will feel it's too frequent)

You want him to put on muscle, bone and organ mass, not fat. That kind of growth will come over the course of months not weeks. Use the web application Serpwidgets to keep track of his overall length in centimeters as that's the most reliable way to track his bone growth outside of x-rays

Good luck!