Hey guys, Eros has been on the hubba bubba side for a while now. I’ve adjusted his feeding schedule a good bit, but this dude is still gaining weight. Unfortunately he has lost a LOT of exercise opportunities as well, and that’s probably got a lot to do with it.
He used to eat 1XL f/t rat every month, now he eats 1L rat every two months.
I used to be able to let him out of his enclosure to roam and climb and cause chaos for anywhere from 5 to 12 hours every week, and i believe that helped a lot, especially with the added outdoors time he got when the weather permitted. Except now that the winter has come, the mite concern from the rescue i boarded with became a full on infestation, and with everything else going on, he has not had anywhere near the ammount of exercise he is accustomed to.
I have DE all over the floor in the boarding room at the new place the snakes are being kept. I do weekly treatments and that takes up any free time i would otherwise have to interact with him for exercise purposes, and it’s still wayy too cold to take him outside in the PNW.
My concern is that as of right now, restricting food intake is the only consistent way i can make an impact on his health, but i don’t want to potentially cause any starvation related problems. I know making the body subsist off of it’s own fat reserves isn’t exactly healthy on his internal organs.
How long do you guys think i could go between feedings before that becomes a problem i should be worrying about?
Do you have any thoughts on things i could build or buy or jerryrig to create little ‘snakexercises’ for him that could give him a bit of a challenge? (Outside of me holding him 24/7)
For context and those that don’t know he is a 15 year old Dumerils Boa. He is my first older adult snake, so it is a learning process to figure out just how slow his digestive system is compared to my younger adults.
I don’t have any brilliant advice for you, but I’ll be curious to hear what people have to say on the topic, because I recently came to the realization that my sand boa has gotten a bit on the hefty side. Not too bad, but I definitely want to keep her from getting any fatter. She’s also sort of a middle-aged adult, at about 12-13 years old (estimate). So yeah, definitely curious about the best way to help an older snake slim down a little without starving them. I know it can be tricky, because snake physiology is so good at conserving resources.
A little popup mesh “tent” can be filled with things you can throw out or sterilize like plastic bowls, cardboard boxes with holes, and PVC frames for climbing, and you can put him in it for exercise time on a clean floor, then when you are done letting him “play”, clean and sanitize all surfaces accordingly.
It’d be some work but doing that maybe twice a week for a couple hours, maybe evenings if he’s nocturnal, would give him time to move about. You could even put the “tent” in a big enough bath tub for ease of post-playtime cleaning.
Eros is one fluffy boy!!! Your feeding schedule doesn’t sound bad to me, and he dosent look like he is starving! Does he have room in his enclosure for a basking shelf that he would have to “work” for to get on top of. I know my BCI’s use theirs all the time, or can you attach a plastic hide box mounted upside down on the top of the enclosure? I know alot of carpet python owners do that with success. Maybe it would entice some vertical exercise, or be it, snakerecise!!!
I think every 2 month feeding should be fine and help him cut back on some weight. The other ideas of some enrichment tents, areas to exercise is also a great idea. He doesn’t look morbidly obese to me. I’d get a base weight of him now and compare it after few months and so on.
Cut feedings down obviously, But another way to take weight off of them is by feeding them much smaller meals than what they should have. When snakes digest, they go through a process called fuel switching where they use their own energy to begin digestion but once that’s underway, they “fuel switch” and start to use energy from the prey item. If the prey item is not substantial enough to provide sufficient nutrition, they will continue to use their own energy to complete digestion. You’re basically leeching calories off of them by doing it that way.
I would do smalls or even a large mouse. You’re just trying to get them to waste calories during digestion. Alternately, you could just not feed it at all for a couple of months. I had to do a rehab on an obese Florida Kingsnake and it was so bad I literally didn’t feed it for three months.
