How soon to refeed?

Just fed my new one month old normal female a small F/T mouse tonight. First time feeding for me! I’d like to try to feed her again in 5 days to help put weight on her. What do you think? I don’t want to push her too hard or anything. I would like to grow her nice and big lol.

Honestly, ball pythons (even hatchlings) only really need to be fed every 7 days. Skipping a week once they are a few months old here and there can also keep them from constantly having the stress of digesting food on their body. The last thing you want is to power feed your animal and have it get overweight and live a short life. They can take 4-5 years to really get big, but even then genetics plays a big role in how large they get.

Thanks. I don’t want to power feed.

I start hatchlings on a 3-5 day schedule to get their gut going… smaller meals more often will help their digestive systems acclimate more readily to more Calcium strong rodents when they are bigger as well as promote a good feeding response into adulthood. I will say that feeding Live or f/t with short term interactions is best to operant train them… I’ve had good success with minimizing interactions with food to about 90 seconds… this is good for a ball pythons confidence and minimizes pitfalls that can cause them to loose their confidence… I’ve been starting hatchlings in this manner into double-quadruple their hatch weight for over a decade. Feeding a young bp a large ‘appropriately’ sized meal that takes long processing and lags them out is a thing of the past.
Smaller than appropriate meals more often is employed here.

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I like my hatchlings to be fed every 5 days. Once they hit around 500g and they go onto smalls I dial back to 7 to 10 days. As they get older I will dial that back to 10 to 14 days depending on the snake. If they are breeding or have just laid I will feed a few days early.

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