Powerfeeding - Why?

[Artie]

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I feed all my juveniles a few times a week.
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I cannot imagine, a snake, (especially a juvenile) would be feeding a few times a week in the wild.

End of story for me.

[Magpie]

Can someone please post the formulae for power feeding?

BTW Artie, try going up to Queensland where a lot of our snakes come from ans dee how many geckoes, frogs and other food items there are. If the hatchies aint feeding more than once a week, they aint trying.

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This topic has been said before but.....
If a jungle is powerfed it does not colour as good as a normally fed jungle ie the skin is stretched more, think of a balloon been blown up too big and the colour loss.
also the colour comes on as they grow, if they speed past too fast they will miss a lot of colour-growth time.
It makes sense but can anyone offer any opinions based on factual/practical information?
My Jungles are fussy eaters anyway so they are growing slow regardless.

[ether]

Would a hatchlign eat a mouse and then say to himself "thats enough food for me for a week" i doubt it. If another mouse ran past 2 days later then my bet would be that it would eat it.

[BROWNS]

Here's a pic of a fat jungle that died from fatty liver disease.A beautiful animal which had it's lifespan cut short at 6 years old from being grown too quickly.Jungles don't tolerate being pumped with food or powerfed as the term goes.This animal had that much fat it was incredible.He even had a fat deposit on his heart.There's a pic of the autopsy in my gallery and you can see how much fat there was.

I feel feeding lean rats or mice once a week to a growing snake and once a fortnight to adults is a good feeing regime to follow.

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Thats Huge! - also blows the colour myth!
He must have been a beautiful animal in his day.

[BROWNS]

Yep awesome colour but as you can see he was just too big.He's the biggest jungle i've seen that's for sure.

I'm not sure what he looked like colourwise when younger but seemed to hold colour well as an adult.He came from a reputable breeder as an adult and had obviously been grown too quickly and fed too much.I slimmed him down but the damage had already been done.His liver was kaputand full of lipids...........

Very sad to see such a gorgeous animal die knowing it could easily have been prevented in the first place.Some people are just in too much of a hurry to breed and try to grow their animals too quickly for this reason...

I've seen a few obese bhp's that also died from fatty liver disease.One of these was that fat it barely moved.

[Slateman]

Rick My babies doing fine. They had last feed on sunday and nighty night in 2 weeks.
Regarding the fat liver, I spoken about that with vet and he said to me that sometimes he is doing ortopsy on thin snake and liver is full of fat. He said that sometimes the animal have disorder and build fat in liver instead growing body. It is strange to think about fet liver in skiny animal.

[cwarren72]

One day maybe there will be true study done on this subject and all our questions will be answered? Until then the debate continues.

[AGAMIDAE]

the colour's no good if the animal is dead......all we can do now is imagin the offspring that couls have come from that snake...