How much/often do you feed your Diamond hatchling?

[sharyn]

Just wondering how often people feed their Diamond hatchlings. We are currently feeding our 4 month old hatchling a small fuzzie mouse about once a week. Is this enough? We've read different articles and most say that because the Diamond is an opportunistic feeder you can actually overfeed them, however we don't want to starve the little guy either!

 

[Bryce]

Hi,

I normally feed my hatchie's every 7days, once they get to yearling's depending on sex i start to increase the days, 1 day everytime they get a bigger meal.

I have an adult male who get fed every 14days and the female12-14 days.

Just what i do and works for me and my pythons are in beautiful condition.

These eat medium sized rats which have lower fat content than the large rats.

I perfer smaller more frequent meals than one large one every month.

 

[sharyn]

We weighed our diamond last night which was about 44g and the fuzzy is about 5.5g - do you go on weight to work out if there getting enough to eat? We're not able to measure at the moment as it's in the process of sloughing but that brings up another question - when we can measure do you measure from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail?

 

[MatE]

If the size of the meal leaves a nice size lump in there belly thats good.And you measure from snout to vent (Bum)to get there length(SVL).

 

[Dan19]

Thats lizards Mate. Do you have any pics of the snake with the mouse in its stomach?

 

[Renagade]

yeah feed your hatchy once a week. you'll be apples

 

[junglemad]

feed it a fuzzy a week, two if it will take them

 

[sweetangel]

well my little diamond is almost 5 months old and i was feeding 1 weaner mouse each week.... but it didnt leave much of a lump and passed though pretty quickly, so then i fed him 2 in one go and left him for about 14 days cos he shed in between, then i did the same again and left for 2 weeks.... but i didnt like feeding him 2 at once so his last meal was a fuzzy rat, might have been a little big for him so will leave him for about 10 days to see how he digests it. Is that to big, he's about 65-70cm? and it left quite a large bump.... i dont want to over feed, is that to much, should i leave him for a while/ longer time between meals?

 

[RedEyeGirl]

i want a diamond!!!!

 

[disasterpiece7.0]

well my little diamond is almost 5 months old and i was feeding 1 weaner mouse each week.... but it didnt leave much of a lump and passed though pretty quickly, so then i fed him 2 in one go and left him for about 14 days cos he shed in between, then i did the same again and left for 2 weeks.... but i didnt like feeding him 2 at once so his last meal was a fuzzy rat, might have been a little big for him so will leave him for about 10 days to see how he digests it. Is that to big, he's about 65-70cm? and it left quite a large bump.... i dont want to over feed, is that to much, should i leave him for a while/ longer time between meals?

So long as his temps are good for digestion then he should be fine.

 

[pythonmum]

If your snake looks healthy, has a nice lump in the stomach after swallowing and sheds every 6 - 12 weeks, all is well. If it is taking 3 months between sheds, start feeding a bigger size of mouse. My Bredls the same age have been eating hopper mice, but they are at 60 + grams. (Moving them up to weaners soon.)

 

[MatE]

Get them off mice and start feeding them rats they will grow quicker and im not going to sit and wait for them to finsh of 20-30 mice in one sitting.Why do people wait until they are months old as so as they can fit in a rat start them on that,will make life much easier when they get older.

 

[Ramsayi]

I never put any carpets onto rats until they are around a year old.A lot of people go from decent sized mice onto pink or fuzzy rats which I think is a backward step.I wait until the snakes are big enough to handle weaner rats before switching them.

 

[MatE]

How can something like a mouse which is basically fur and bones to a rat which is meat and bones be backwards?Would really like to know.

 

[pythonmum]

We went to pink rats, but lack of fur leads to a bit of diarrhoea. When we got a snake from SXR they recommended going through the mouse sizes until you can swap over to a velvet rat because of the roughage provided by fur. We swapped back to mice and the droppings are much tidier. Snakes are growing and feeding well, so everyone is happy.

 

[sharyn]

Do you have any pics of the snake with the mouse in its stomach?

Just took a photo about an hour after it fed - what do you think?

 

[muzza67]

Nice Photo

I'm curious too!

 

[licky]

when was the last time he/she pooed

 

[fraser888]

well my little diamond is almost 5 months old and i was feeding 1 weaner mouse each week.... but it didnt leave much of a lump and passed though pretty quickly, so then i fed him 2 in one go and left him for about 14 days cos he shed in between, then i did the same again and left for 2 weeks.... but i didnt like feeding him 2 at once so his last meal was a fuzzy rat, might have been a little big for him so will leave him for about 10 days to see how he digests it. Is that to big, he's about 65-70cm? and it left quite a large bump.... i dont want to over feed, is that to much, should i leave him for a while/ longer time between meals?

It can't be to big if the snake will eat it!