I will take your advice and feed smaller. However, I can assure that they are not fat, One of these girls I actually rescued as an obese ball python between 5 and 5.5 feet. She was on actual jumbos at 350-400 grams per meal and now currently is on my jumbos, 250 grams a meal. She got thinner to the point where she has no rolls and hasn’t gained or lost any weight/girth since she reached that point. I do just believe she is a generally large female, the previous owner bred her twice and said they got 14 eggs out of her both times, absolutely insane. I personally have not bred her. She is actually 34 according to the previous owner. And as for the other one. She is about 3.5-4 years old and still getting longer while not gaining any girth. I believe she may actually be a Volta as she is also a rescue that I got about a year and a half ago. I was told she was a normal but she’s creeping up on 6 feet now so I have my suspicions.
I also just want to add for the first female. She gets fed about every 5 weeks and has no trouble balling up completely. She does have a decently sharp triangular body shape so I can feel her spine when she balls up. No mushiness and not even any rolls when she balls up. And her stomach is ever so slightly concave. I personally thought this was a healthy ball python with these characteristics especially considering her age. Do let me know if I am incorrect though.
Look at my most recent post. I explain that from what I know one of the females shows no signs of obesity and is 34 years old. While the other is abnormally long with a large head leaving me to believe she is Volta.
They are also both rescues and the first female was obese when I got her weighing close to 4000 grams on 350+ gram meals. She is now 2850 grams last time I weighed her on sub 270 gram meals.
I’ve never opened up a captive snake of any boid species that didn’t have excessive fat pads. They don’t store fat like a mammal. It’s stored in the body cavity not intramuscularly like in mammals. Looks kinda like gross garlic cloves just pushing against all their organs.
The reason I asked about Str8 Fire is LaVance feeds exclusively mice and he’s one of the top BP breeders in the world.
I do wonder actually how long it took him to get where he is considering he only feeds mice. Because even Kinova says he’s breeding his females at about 2 years and 1500 grams sometimes earlier and sometimes later depending on how long they take to grow. And just looking at a few snakes from Str8Fire he has females under 1000 grams but at 3 years old and snakes sub 500 grams at 2 years old… So any hold backs he has could take upwards of 4 or more years before breeding. It’s interesting how he’s one of the best but his snake growth is limited so much.
A snake at 2 years old that is over 1500g most likely isn’t going to be as healthy (in most cases) as a snake that’s older and getting to that weight at a more sustainable rate. As @chesterhf said, there is way too much overfeeding in the hobby.
This is sort of a soapbox of mine, but the things that you’re considering as a negative here are actually a positive in the animals life cycle. Most of these animals from these breeders that are getting up to size and dropping eggs by two years old are not going to live a long life. A ball python is capable of living 30 to 60 years. Most of these breeding animals are only going to live 10 to 15. Many don’t make eight or nine years old if they’re pushed too hard. The carpet python community found this out a long time ago, learned their lesson and dialed back. BP breeders are full speed ahead, make it as fat as you can as quick as you can cash out as soon as possible. Because the market changes on morphs all the time breeders don’t care about what they consider to be irrelevant morphs or combos
One of the reasons I started reducing my ball python collection in previous years is because breeders do not care about the health of the animal, and they will not listen to science regarding the health of the animal. It’s money and project accomplishment over Health. Next time you have a ball python die, cut it open and look inside of it.
When people who had kept snakes for just a couple of years and were all about the ball python breeding game were inquiring about my animals and then complaining that they’re too small for the age because I feed them carefully; That’s what I knew I was done with it.
Louder for the people in the back, this whole comment is so good. We’ve gone off topic a bit from the original post, but I think this is an important discussion to have.
I’ve always found it wild that people expect an animal that can easily live for 25, 30 maybe even 50 years to be fully mature and breeding ready by 2. The whole industry is focused on “how fast can I get this animal to breed so I can ride the next big morph/combo trend?”, not “how can I care for this animal that I am responsible for to the best of my ability?”. People post on here regularly asking how soon they can breed a female because they don’t want to wait another season, there’s literally a thread titled “Grow ‘em Bigger, Faster…Breed sooner!” and power feeding is rampant.
While I don’t have any data on correlations between age of first clutch and lifespan, or number of clutches and lifespan, the science on caloric deprivation and lifespan across species is very well established, and studies on the impact of intermittent fasting on lifespan and various health conditions are a really hot topic right now. All this to say, when it comes to feeding ball pythons (and myself - I try to practice what I preach), sometimes less is more when it comes to feeding for health and longevity
I definitely agree with this post. On r/ball pythons the community talks about this all of the time. I always see posts of people asking “how can I get my female to gain 600 grams fast?” Generally, all of the comments explain how feeding larger meals or more often is just going to make a fat snake. Just the weight of the snake does not determine if it should be bred or not. A 1500 gram snake may only be a year to a year and a half old because it was power-fed. And a lot of negligent people argue that if the female has follicles you should breed it because it’s ready to be bred. I don’t agree with this personally unless they go on a hunger strike. There is a reason ball pythons live 10-15 years in the wild and unbred pet ball pythons live upwards of 50 and even 60 years old sometimes.
I think another important thing to look at are these new studies of feeding a snake a small meal every day rather than a big meal every couple weeks. This is interesting because my first thought is that keeping a snakes heart beating faster and everything about it more awake and less dormant instantly lowers its lifespan. Part of why they live so long is probably because their bodies are in a more dormant state for most of their lives.
I had no idea ball pythons had the ability to live so long, all my BP info has come from breeders so I suppose that makes sense if breeding really takes it out of them.
With females, the energy cost of producing and incubating eggs clearly has a detriment to the body, but does this occur with breeding males as well? Maybe due to their common breeding season fasts?
My guess is that animal is probably only fed once a month or maybe twice but with smaller meals. Something a veterinarian told me a long time ago has held true in most things that I’ve worked with. Skinny dogs live longer. Seems silly but It’s accurate.
I doubt it really takes much out of the males. I mean if you look at people for example, a guy can get it off as many times as he wants. It’s the carrying a baby for nine months and birthing it that takes it out of a person. So I would say the males shouldn’t be really affected much at all like the females are. I mean if you see the females bodies and how empty they are after laying a clutch of eggs it’s clearly not beneficial to their bodies. I’m not saying breeding is bad, I think that because it’s a natural event for animals it doesn’t do much harm unless they are over bred. Unfortunately I think some people do over breed, I’ve heard of some people getting two clutches a year out of a female which probably does shorten their lifespan. Especially when many people actually breed their ball pythons one season then give them a break season. Huge difference from twice per season.
Fasting and caloric deprivation are very well established to play a positive role in health and lifespan (outside of actual health issues that induce starvation/malnutrition). It goes just beyond the idea of losing weight = healthy, there’s a master regulatory pathway within cells known as the mTOR pathway that is involved in nutrient sensing, and acts as a molecular switch. In fed, nutrient rich conditions, the cellular pathways involved in growth and protein synthesis are activated, which can be too much of a good thing resulting in build up of damaged proteins, unhealthy cells, etc within the body. During nutrient deprivation/starvation, mTOR is inhibited and a mechanism called autophagy is activated/upregulated. Damaged organelles, misfolded and accumulated proteins, and cellular debris are all degraded and reycled for amino acids, which serves to"clean out" cells, resulting in really amazing outcomes for health and longevity. This pathway is huge in aging and neurodegeneration fields as a therapeutic target, it’s what I actually work on. Taking a break from eating and allowing this pathway to kick in is probably one of the best things you can do for you (and your animal’s) health alongside physical activity/exercise.
Mice just for the cost. Don’t know that I’ve ever even tried a hatchling ball python on a rat pup. I never used to switch to rats until they could take mediums (also for cost) but have been using some small rats lately. Actually would like to get everything on ASFs but strangely many of mine don’t take to ASFs. Maybe I have an odd smelling ASF subspecies. Never had much luck starting babies on ASFs but only tried with problem starters.
I’ve found it much more difficult to get babies started on ASFs than mice. It’s definitely doable, but it took longer to get everyone eating and most wouldn’t take on the first few tries, as opposed to mice where they almost all take to eating immediately. In general I’ve found the whole “ball pythons love ASFs” thing to be overhyped and untrue
I’ve started over with ASFs several times over years and years and do wonder if there are different subspecies we are lumping together. Sometimes I’ve had the ones almost all of the balls act like they are candy and sometimes mixed bag.
I know there are something like a half dozen species of multimammate rat but I believe only natalensis was “domesticated”. Have not dug deep on them however so I could easily be mistaken
Louder for the people in the back, this whole comment is so good. We’ve gone off topic a bit from the original post, but I think this is an important discussion to have.