| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Alves76 |
Posted - 15/05/2014 : 20:24:00
I went to get some more rats tonight and thought I'd get some larger rats as the last couple I feed seemed quite small with respect to Mr Snake's girth.
I bought a few and weighed them when I got home. All of the rats are roughly the same girth as the snake however their weights range from 38g to 57g (the average being around 45g).
Now Mr Snake's weight is around 255g which allows for a feed of between 26g to 39g going on the 10%-15% body weight rule.
So question is, what do I go by? The girth of the snake/rat or the percentage body weight?
Or option 3...stop being so anal and feed with what I have cos a snake in the wild will not have scales (at least not digital scales anyway)  |
| 6 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Alves76 |
Posted - 23/05/2014 : 11:54:25
Thanks for explaining that. Makes sense. |
| Lotabob |
Posted - 22/05/2014 : 23:22:04
The 10-15% guideline is more to do with their dietary requirements, they only need to eat 10-15% of their body weight over X period of time depending on their weight.
Basically a royal up to 500 grams in weight only requires food intake of 10-15% of their body weight every 5 days.
Up to 1kg and it's every 7 days upto 1.5kg and it's every 10 days and anything over that is every fortnight.
Girth wise the guidelines are no larger than their own girth. It's not the largest meal they can swallow by quite a long way but we don't want to push them too hard and as they will be getting fed again soon enough there isn't a requirement to to push them to their limit as it's way over what they'd need on our imposed feeding regime. |
| Alves76 |
Posted - 18/05/2014 : 16:30:15
True. These rats are actually quite thin, but quite long. By looking at them I they look ok, and as the snake eats more rats it will get heavier so that 15% max will increase each week anyway. |
| boomslang |
Posted - 18/05/2014 : 16:11:30
I feed a size down sometimes for awhile,due to shops around me not having small/med rats sometimes.
You can tell,what's to big/small just by looking at it. |
| Alves76 |
Posted - 16/05/2014 : 08:35:55
LOL. Very good! |
| Baobab |
Posted - 15/05/2014 : 22:37:02
We usually try to stick to the 10 to 15% of their weight but have fed slightly heavier occasionally going by girth. They tend not to use digital scales in the wild as the batteries are a pain to get. I think they get a mate to do some planking on a stone and with the food on the snake.  |
