Power Feeding

[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?