Grow 'em Bigger, Faster...Breed sooner!

I, for one, appreciate the insight and information posted here by Wilbanks. It’s clearly not a “hey hobbyists, you should all do it this way!” message, from my own perception. But, like they say, make it idiot proof, they’ll just make a better idiot.

Feeding habits must be extremely different in captivity than what we think the wild is like. The old standard of one prey item a week has held for ages with us when applied to quite a number of common species. But a simple video I watched, posted of a wild bird’s nest being raided by a black rat snake, initially sparked my interest in what things really are like in the wild. In the video, the snake consumed the entire clutch of eggs. Liken that to feeding your pet 5 items in one sitting. Not something most of us do as part of standard practice.

Opportunistic animals in the wild run on opportunity. Short of us sticking a GoPro on a few hundred snakes and setting them free, their feeding frequencies will still remain somewhat secretive.

It is not upon us to dictate what a healthy frequency is supposed to be in captivity, only that we provide the nutrition that yields a happy, healthy animal.

That a snake willingly eats a small prey item every single day for a captive keeper, shows what these animals are capable of. If it were force feeding, I would certainly rip into someone for it.

Again, nobody has to follow suit with this type of regimen, and I personally won’t, every day, but I can certainly learn from this as I often felt much is lost when snakes digest fur and bones, but smaller prey certainly needs at least some higher frequency to achieve nutritional demands of a growing animal.

Thanks for sharing your results, Mr. Wilbanks.

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some people you just can’t reach, so you get what we had here.

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can you link some of your sources, please :slight_smile: I’m tryna gather reliable research for both sides & draw an informed conclusion on the functionalities in ball python metabolisms.

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Wow do I have issues with this thread. Let’s go through them.

Since numerous people have brought it up, power feeding is overfeeding an animal, enticing oversized meals, piggybacking meals, or force feeding without necessity. Mike’s model isn’t any of these; it is taking the same amount of meal and feeding it incrementally.

Now Nick, posting a study and trying to use it as evidence to back up your position, without citing specifically what evidence is backing up your position. That is such a facebook thing to do. Well this isn’t facebook, quote the paper to make your point. If your response is something a long the lines of “I shouldn’t have to spoon feed it to you” (pun not intended) or “do your research”, again this isn’t facebook and you’ve already shown your goal is to win an internet argument and has nothing to do with a civil discussion for the betterment of these animals. Notice even the study you linked, cites its references with page numbers.

So later on you give a little insight to your point.

So a significant amount of the meal is used during digestion. There is no increase in overall meal with Mikes method, so I fail to see how that in particular is relevant. Also where does it say increasing the organ function by 40x? I see metabolic rate increases 44x if thats where you pulled that from, but that is directly related to the energy comment. That doesn’t mean every organ is functioning 40x more. So feel free to teach me something here, but I think you are misrepresenting data.

The far stretch is that, at best, you are stating that your assumptions and correlations are “the case.” At worst, it is a malicious and purposely mislead attack.

Also some things I found interesting

Mike is reporting he has done this without changing any of the factors they mention. I’d also like to know how they got a snake to eat 100% of its weight… but anyways.

They don’t discuss it, but their graphs of wet mass for the organs don’t come back to their fasting values even after 15 days, besides the heart which seems to around day 13-14. We generally feed our snakes every 5-7 days by most feeding models. They fed 25% of the mass of the snake, most feeding models feed 5-15%.

While I think all of that is worth having a civil discussion about, I think most would agree it is very apples to oranges and you are drawing correlations that are most likely not causation. This data is hard to apply to a more standard feeding model and draw conclusions from, let alone use it to attack mikes model. I mean seriously, the standard feeding model increases feeding frequency well before fasting values return and feeds smaller meals. The EXACT same thing can be said about Mike’s model compared to the standard feeding model, only at an even higher frequency than that.

I have no problem discussing the above, I however never want to see the below again, you took your conclusion from above and responded like this:

Those are quite the accusations, and I’ve already spent enough time on this so I won’t go through each one individually. Not only is this off topic, it has no basis here, its unprovoked and toxic to the forum. Grow up and keep your personal vendetta between you and mike, this is a place for civil discussion. Just because its unconventional doesn’t make it wrong (or right), and just because you have a personal problem doesn’t mean you spew it all over. Again this isn’t Facebook. Handle your business.

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Sounds like a few people are just repeating what they read off Google the previous day.

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2 posts were split to a new topic: New Ball Pytrhon

This thread certainly should not turn into a praising or bashing storm of M. Wilbanks.
I do have my personal opinion about his business but this does not belong here.

It is an interesting topic that hatchlings up to 500 should benefit from daily but smal feedings. I don’t have the veterinarien backround to know if this feeding regime would be harmful or not.
From common sense though I would think that it can not be beneficial to keep any digestion related organ at pace for 6-9 months without any resting periods.

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this is a very interesting topic, Its great to see some people sharing their years of knowledge working with large numbers of animals. It also seems there are others who think the way they do things is thge only way to do it and if someone does things differently than them they are simply wrong. I for one look forward to more post like this from people like Wilbanks.

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The sources I read have already been discussed in this thread, which is one that I have learned a lot by participating in. :slight_smile: I am in the same boat as you trying to learn more.

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is there a way to double like or heart your comment?

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Mike, what size rats match up with this feeding program for various sizes of snake? My 4 babies are all eating well, one on F/T rat fuzzies and 3 on live mice while my breeder rats get started. I’d say without weighing them that everyone is between 100-125g.

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In all honesty. When it comes down to it, everybody has different ways of feeding. And if it ain’t broke, they won’t fix it. Have read everyone’s posts. And, while most are good ideas, and insights, I have my way of feeding. Sure it works slower on weight gain than the rest. But the important thing is…it works. I’m not arguing the growing faster, sooner part. It’s your snakes, do it how you want. Just saying, putting what works for one person off on everybody else? What you do is good for YOUR snakes. Not everyone else. All snakes are different. Not just morph-wise different.

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This here is pure wisdom. Comparing a mammals to reptiles is a long shot at best. And honestly unrealistic.

Thank you for sharing this bit of info and I am gonna apply it with a select few of my own hatchlings and test it myself…it makes sense

Just incase you guys haven’t found them yet:

Super spider

Watermarking

Changing your BP’s diet to Frozen Rats

How to Treat Stuck Shed

Tips to Avoiding Chargeback

A few useful threads wrote by the MorphMarket Community.

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Yep. Even if I had an opinion on the topic from experience (I don’t.) it only takes a quick read to see someone is an adult and a professional, someone is not.

Shame. But good to see an example of how not to conduct yourself for people just starting out.

Thanks for the articles like these they are very very helpful.

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Yeah it seems like they only see the part they dont like and argue that point to death bro

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Mike,

I’m curious how detailed of records you kept and how long have you been using this strategy?

I admit my curiosity is purely academic, as it is not something I would employ without substantially more data to support the benefits weighed against any long term side effects. Let’s face it, these are not short lived animals that can provide long term data in only a few years. In fact I wish I still had close proximity and access to a biology lab to run regular urate analysis on specimens before, during, and after this regiment and compare it against specimens kept on the “currently accepted” feeding strategy. This would certainly address the concern regarding potential kidney and liver impact, that I think is unlikely, but far more realistic and genuine than wanting to see the results of a necropsy in the reptile hobby.

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The world’s oldest snake is a ball python that is over 50. How is that short-lived?

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I’m pretty sure they were referring to on average. Actually 1,000.00% sure.