Hello! This is my first post. I got a reverse okeetee corn snake from someone on Craigslist. She seems to be doing well. She eats one small mouse (hopper) per week. She takes food easily.
She just had her first shed with me. I measured the skin, and it is 35 inches long. I also weighed her for the forst time. She was fidgetty, but I got 109g.
Everything I see online says that at 35 inches, she should be double that weight. Is that right? If so, how often should I feed her? (I bought 25 small mice, so I would rather shorten the interval than buy bigger ones. Also, it seems all she can do to get her mouth around the small mice.)
Extra info: the man I got her from said she is about 1.5 years old.
Measuring the skin is not going to give you an accurate length, it tends to stretch. There is no accurate growth curve for corns, they all tend to grow at their own pace. We’ll need photos to gauge body condition, but 109g at a year and a half doesn’t sound concerning.
Welcome! Don’t worry about weight vs length. She should be slender, but not skinny.
She’s ready for at least a medium/weaned mouse (~13-18g) weekly. And after a few of those she’d be ready for large adult mice (~29-25g). But I understand that you have a bunch of hoppers to use up. So you can give doubles of those instead. Try not to exceed 15% of the snake weight by too much.
Ditto that sheds aren’t a reliable length measurement and that length-to-weight has no real correlation in corns. In fact, the man who literally wrote the book on corn snake breeding and care—Don Soderburg—said he measured for years hoping to find a correlation to gauge healthy weight and never could. You just have to look at body condition. Pics of your snake would help us help you.
As a general rule, there are visual cues. If her spine appears triangular shaped along her back, she’s too thin. If she looks roughly like a round loaf of bread (or I like to think of it as a Roman archway) shape, she’s good. Muscle bumping up around their spine is fine as they curve around objects, but fat gathering into an M-shaped spine when they’re on the straightaway or “hips” by the tail, or obvious scale spread are all indicators that they’re overweight.
Looks like a healthy weight. If you are curious about her actual length, I suggest getting a piece of string or yarn. You can either lay it alongside her and mark her length on that if she’s being peaceful, or try and get a snake-length of it when she’s in your hands. Measure the string and you know how long the snake is.
You said “small mice.” Do you know the weight? Brands vary.
@bat-mite Bat-mite You can also let her slither along a baseboard and string measure her that way but it will probably take 2 of you to stretch out the string.
That’s what is usually considered a fuzzy. At 109 g, she should be getting around 14-20 g per feeding. You can feed multiples of what you’ve got weekly until they’re gone. After that, try and find the higher weight meals since the nutrition value is different. Once your snake gets up to 180 g or so, she can move up to adult mice (24 g +).
