always hungry?? and another question

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Posted by KingOz on April 28, 2003 at 21:02:17:

In Reply to: always hungry?? and another question posted by greg woodie on April 28, 2003 at 01:06:26:

:i have 2 questions:
:1. anybody out there with juvenile Florida Kings...how often do you feed them?

That depends on who you ask. Osborne (a breeder and writer here) feeds young snakes as often as they will eat to max out their growth. He says, on his websight www.probreeders.com, that there are no signs of a fast growth rate causing probs. I am not sure about this but when a snake is young say 3 years and under...they are still growing faster than they do later in life, so making them fat would require ALOT of food. I feed my apricot pueblan milk every 5 days and she is under a year. I started her on one pink then moved her up to 2, and now she's at 3 because I don't have any fuzzys yet. She is not fat and she sheds every 4 weeks or so. My 4 mt old brooksi was rather skinny when I got her, so I am working on getting her back into condition. She gets 1 large pink every three days...and she is starting to look better and is in shed...she is large enough to eat small fuzzys but when a snake needs to be gotten into condition small but freq. meals work best IHMO. My adult black mex king (3 yrs) gets 2 hoppers and one weener every 7 days. I think it may be hard to tell if a snake is fat just by looking at the girth unless the owner has alot of exp. with that kind of snake. My rec. is to judge their weight by holding them and lightly rubbing the skin... you should feel some "padding" under your finger that moves a little when you move your finger in a circular manor...under that little movement you should feel firm muscle. If there is alot of padding cut down,but don't stop out right, on feeding.

:2. will snakes' shed cycles speed up at times? my Cali King shed just a few weeks ago and now he's in shed again.

He could be growing...cals do get bigger than four feet. But I would check and make sure he does not have mites, blister disease, etc.

hope this helped...but keep looking for info and contact GOOD breeders about questions. When it comes to weight, shedding, etc. different people have experienced different things�for one snake x feeding would make it fat, but for a different snake of the same kind x feeding does not make it fat.

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