Power Feeding

[elevation24]

I'd like to know everyone's opinion on power feeding.

Does it even exist? If so, what would you consider power feeding? I mean, how many prey items would have to be given - and how often - for it to be considered power feeding?

What do you base your opinion on?

[Big Mike]

I think that power feeding is: Intentionally over feeding to promote faster than normal growth.

I don't like the idea of power feeding in order to bring animals up to breeding size at a young age for the purpose of monetary gain.

I do think that it's OK to feed your animals more than the minimum required so that they are happy & healthy...even a little chubby.

[daver676]

Now that she has started eating on her own, I feed my 5 month old ball 1 large adult mouse every 5 days. I think this is normal...

[eyespy]

Yes, I think it definitely exists but is very hard to accurately detect. Many of the snakes brought in for necrospy die as a result of liver and kidney failure which is often linked to too much protein in the diet. But external symptoms in living animals are pretty subtle. Since snakes' fat generally hides among the internal organs and beneath the muscles by the time you notice an "obese" snake organ failure is often fairly advanced.

I base this on 15 years working as a veterinary surgical tech assisting at necropsies. Some years kidney/liver failure with lipidosis ran as high as 70% of all snake mortality in our practice. But pinpointing the exact cause after death is tough. Most of these animals were never seen by a vet during their lifetime so there aren't good records of feeding schedules and husbandry.

[tHeGiNo]

Eyespy: then, lets use ball pythons as an example, what would you consider overfeeding / powerfeeding?

[fateamber]

I don't like power feeding, if it can put the snakes health in danger it isn't really worth it, although it depends on how much is too much? There is a diffenrence between feeding slightly extra and feeding a LOT extra.

[eyespy]

Too many variables to say how much is too much vs. how much is just right. Metabolic rates vary with temperatures, humidity, age, size and physical condition of the snake, stress levels, and who knows what else. We don't even know how much most of these dead snakes were fed which further complicates things.

If the belly bump from the last meal hasn't moved downstream yet and reduced by at least half in size, it's probably too early to feed again and you're just sending food out of the stomach prematurely where it will be absorbed in a not-fully digested state that tends to bunge up liver and kidneys. Let the snake itself be your guide.

[Piers]

I think animals such as ball pythons in a way should be power fed. Or better put feed as much as you can because as we all know they will eventually go off their food for up to 6 months, and the more fat reserves the better off they will do.
I was at one point feeding my ball pythons every 3 to 5 days and they all went off their food sooner or later. Some for only a month or 2 others up to about 5 months. After all that time they still looked good and healthy and after a meal or 2 you could'nt tell that they ever went off their food.
I feel that had I not fed them as much as they could handle safely when i did I'd of ended up with a lot of thin animals.
Piers.
P.S.
None of my snakes got "pin head". That to me is over feeding.
Pin head is when you feed a snake so much that the body out grows the head, a definite sign of over doing it. The head will eventually catch up.

[mykee]

My opinion of 'powerfeeding' is tricking your ball into eating more food than it wants to eat. You hear people throwing around words like "pinhead", and "powerfeed" all the time, in my opinion, as long as my snakes will eat what I give them on thier OWN, then I keep feeding them. Some of my 2003 hatchlings eat 3 fuzzies every 5 days, and some that eat one every week. I do not consider that "powerfeeding". In my opinion, an example of "powerfeeding" would be to sew a second rat to the tail of the first rat to make the snake eat both. This is deceiving to the snake, because you are not sure if the snake needed, or even wanted the second item. I have been very lucky with most of my snakes, in the sense that they eat fairly heavily without resorting to such underhanded methods.

[elevation24]

Originally posted by mykee
In my opinion, an example of "powerfeeding" would be to sew a second rat to the tail of the first rat to make the snake eat both.

OMG hahahhaha :D

[mykee]

Don't laugh, it happens A LOT. Many people use this technique to get their balls up to weight.

[elevation24]

Christ, I thought it was a joke :eek:

Not so funny anymore..... now it's just, errrr... strange, and scary. I never would have imagined.

[mykee]

When I first got into BP's I admit, I did follow up one rat with a second one. I would wait for my ball to get past the hips of the first food item, and when they opened their mouth, I would gently put the head of the second item in, if they didn't want it, they would pull away, but if they did, they just kept on eating. But FORCING a second item, IMO is just wrong. Kinda gross too. My question to those who do that is this; aren't you worried about the thread or dental floss or whatever it is that you're using getting tied up inside the snake and causing harm?

[MouseKilla]

I'm just trying to picture someone with a collection of snakes spending hours stitching rats together LOL! I'll say that would be some kind of abusive feeding practice but generally, aside from extreme things like that I'm not sure I believe in the existence of powerfeeding. I think Mykee has it right, if they eat it on their own there's no problem. I am no vet so I'm not basing my opinion on any special knowledge but in my experience a snake that is not hungry will not eat on their own.

[Syco]

I offer my young BPs a couple of mice every 3 to 4 days, at that point the lump is gone from their last meal and they are hungry! There has been times when they won't eat when it's offered, or they only want 1 mouse. Fine, I don't push it. The adults are given food once a week, sometimes they eat a lot and sometimes they don't eat at all....but if they are hungry they are getting food. Some might say I feed the young ones too often, but they are healthy and not the least bit overweight. I think they use most of it to grow. I've noticed as my snakes get older they seem to slow down on feedings by themselves.

[rwg]

Just because a snake will eat it doesn't mean it's necessarily hungry. A lot of animals have evolved to deal with "feast or famine" conditions. They will eat when food is available if they can because food may not be available again for a long time. Most animals (even humans...especially humans?) will eat themselves into obesity if they are given the chance.

rg

[mykee]

Eating to obesity is generally a stupid human trick. NONE of my balls are obese, or even overweight, and they are offered food every 5 days or so. Sometimes they eat, sometimes they don't. For the 6 months that they may gorge themselves, makes up for the 4 months during the winter that they don't eat at all. Did you forget about the fast during the winter?

[MouseKilla]

Anyone have a pic of a so-called "obese" BP, or any other snake for that matter? I actually feed my snakes basically as much as they want to eat. I offer it every 7 days to everyone, regardless of size and age and they either eat that week or they don't. There is no question that food is more abundant in my house than it would be in the wild but I don't have any reason to think that they are actually consuming too much. Short of a necropsy is there any other way to detect over-feeding?

[mykee]

Mousekilla, you'll NEVER see a pic of an obese ball, because it doesn't happen all that often, if ever. The proof is in the pudding, and I've NEVER seen the pudding. That puts an obese ball in the same category as the Yeti, Bigfoot and The Loch Ness Monster.

[daver676]

Ok, was is a Yeti?

[MouseKilla]

A yeti is a white, Asian Bigfoot. Now an obese yeti, that would be a find! LOL! Seriously though, has anyone seen an obese snake first hand? And I don't mean an animal that looks like it's head may be out of proportion with it's body, who know's what could cause that, but I mean an honest to God flabby snake. I'm not saying it's impossible, as I said I'm no vet and I haven't owned near as many snakes as some folks around here, I would just love to see what a fat snake looks like. There has to be pics, if I saw an obese snake I would just have to get a pic to show people...it's too weird not to photograph.

[marisa]

I have never seen pics of an obese python or boa but I have most definitly seen photos of obese colubrids, especially corns and kings. I do not personally have any of these photos though.

Marisa

[eyespy]

You seldom will see a picture of an obviously obese boid, but it does indeed happen. Boids don't have subcutaneous pockets of fat the way we mammals do, the fat collects deep in the abdominal cavity where it's hard to tell if the increased bulk is muscle mass or fat tissue.

The vast majority of boids whose necropsy revealed death through obesity-related diseases I've seen were of animals that did not look obese until you open them up and see that the gut is overloaded with fat.

Yellow or orange-tinged urates are a better indicator of obesity-related health issues in most cases than going by the appearance or weight of a snake.

[snakehunter]

i feed my bp roughly 1/5 of her body weight, or 20%. thats a 45-50g rat every 5-7 days

[RepTylE]

I think that as you become familiar with your snake(s) you can get a good feeling for what they need. I know that I can can read mine fairly well . I don't feed them heavily.
I had wondered why so many people would gush oin and on about how fat their snakes are when they could be shortening their lifespan. Every species on the planet suffer health problems from obesity so why would anyone think that herps would be exempt from that simple fact? A well filled out snake is one thing but stuffing them like sausage casings makes no sense to me.

Ty eyespy for the clinical insights. Your comments have been very informative and I appreciate them.:) And snakehunter, that feeding regimen seems reasonable. There's no substitute for good old fashioned common sense.

[jfmoore]

Originally posted by eyespy
Yellow or orange-tinged urates are a better indicator of obesity-related health issues in most cases....

Interesting. Can you point me toward any literature citations regarding that observation? Thanks for your help.

The only thing I've ever noticed in regards to coloration (actually, discoloration) of snake urates its that when an animal hasn't eaten in a long time, its urates are frequently colored green from bile. I don't know why that is, but it must say more about what's going on in the liver than in the gall bladder.

I agree with what you're saying about fat snakes. Even what we might consider "skinny" captive animals can show more than adequate fat stores on necropsy.

-Joan

[eyespy]

I'll search for an online discussion about off-color urates. Basically when the urates are discolored it's a sign of decreased kidney function and indicates too much uric acid, protein, minerals and other substances passing unfiltered through the kidneys.

There are several different causes for decreased kidney function but the most common are dehydration, infection, and too much undigested protein in the diet. Proteins that aren't completely broken down into their amino acid components can overwhelm the kidneys and cause disease or even failure.

[eyespy]

Arrrgg, Vet Pathology and VIN no longer allow public access to case histories, you have to be a subscriber.

The closest I come to a discussion of obesity-related organ failure is this one, which is pretty general:

http://www.anapsid.org/kidney.html

[eyespy]

Joan, the bile thing is normal in fasting animals. The liver continues to excrete bile into the digestive system whether or not there's enough food in there to absorb it. Green rather that yellowish can be a little worrisome as it may indicate dehydration. But sometimes that green is just a result of there being small amounts of feces mixed in.

[MouseKilla]

It sounds as though it is hard to know whether your young BPs (especially) are being overfed or are just growing rapidly. Is it safe to say that if you don't see these signs of diminished organ function (discolored urates) the snake isn't eating more than it can properly digest?

[eyespy]

No, MouseKilla, it's not completely safe to say that. The kidneys have to be in active failure before it gets to that point. Sometimes it's an acute failure that is reversible with excellent hydration and a reduction in the amount of protein being fed, but most times unfortunately it's chronic and will eventually prove fatal. But when an animal is in its fast growth state it's very unusual for kidney failure to set in and you are probably not doing much damage by feeding heavily.

Once sexual maturity has been reached and the metabolism begins to slow down, it's much more of a risk.

[MouseKilla]

Eyespy,

It seems then that there is nearly no way to tell by looking if you are dealing with an overfed or obese animal. But the good news, you're saying, is that you're not likely to feed to excess while the snake is still growing quickly (without going to rat-stitching extremes). Is that an accurate (though oversimplified) summary of what you're saying?

[eyespy]

Mostly accurate. Annual bloodwork can detect obesity-related disease but most folks don't bother with that. A CBC, Chem 20 and liver function tests will pick up changes that signal the onset of decreased organ function in about 65-75% of the cases. Where the problem lies is that so few folks ever get bloodwork done on healthy snakes that there is no known "normal range" for most species, including ball pythons. People are funny. They are more likely to bring a $5 pet rat to the vet for annual checkups than a snake.

We know what grossly abnormal results look like but not what values an animal in peak condition should have. So it's hard to tell just when to slow down the menu, but developing disease can be picked up before it becomes a major issue.

[Reticman]

Now it also depends on the animal and the prey.

For Example, I own a 3 month old Reticulated Python. He is eating 3 large mice every 5 days. Is this powerfeeding? NO and for 2 reasons. Reason # 1 is he should be eating rats but per my stock of frozen mice im waiting til they are finished before I purchase rats, and in order to equal a rats size, multiple prey will do just fine.
Reason # 2..the metabolism rate on retics, especially babies is through the roof. Unlike a ball or corn etc their bulge will last for a few days where as a Retic...and Im not kidding will deigest these 3 large mice within a day or 2..EASILY.

When I owned my ball as well as redtail, they got a nice meal every 5 days til they hit a year and then every 7-9 at that point. Where as even with rats my retic can hanlde 2 a week and this is not cosidered powerfeeding for this type of animal.

Hopes this helps ya

[Solid Snake]

when i had a BP i made sure i power fed her, when those BP goes off food, you're gonna wish u did.