This is my first year breeding and I’ve gotten two locks from both pairs so far, (woohoo!) but I’ve gotten curious. Should I switch my feeding for the girls? Should I feed them more rats, or just larger rats, or more often? And should I add calcium powder to them? I know people do it for many colubrids, but I’m not sure if they do it for ball pythons as well. Both girls are absolutely ravenous and would likely be quite happy to eat more. Right now, both are on medium rats once a week, and both are around 1600 grams.
If I should add calcium powder, should I do it before I offer, or when the rat is already wrapped? Do I do it in powder form or get it wet beforehand?
And finally, obligatory snake photos:
Dallon, possible enchi (sire) x Coconut, enchi pastel (dam)
Jupiter, fire (sire) x Freyja, pastel lesser calico (dam)
I’ve never use calcium powder nor found it neccessary, whole prey is a complete diet for them
At a medium rat per week you’re already feeding fairly heavily, I certainly wouldn’t feed any more than that. Mine get either a medium (or sometmimes a small) every two weeks, just because they want to eat more doesn’t mean that they necessarily should, overeating and obesity has some pretty serious health effects on both healthspan, lifespan and reproductive capacity.
Yeah, I only started feeding once a week once I got visual locks. Usually the girls only get fed mediums or smalls every other week, this is just to make sure they’ve got plenty of nutrients for building eggs.
Good to know I don’t need to use calcium! It’s a constant worry of mine that something will go wrong with either of them, so I’m sort of obsessively monitoring and asking every question I can think of to make sure nothing could possibly go wrong
