AusPaws

Something to know about blood and short tail feeding is that their meals should be smaller than you would normally think (an adult should be getting medium rats IMO, unless they are just really large specimens).  They have an extremely slow metabolism as well and because they are very heavy bodied, it’s easy to overfeed in size or frequency and then end up with an obese animal.

Personally, I feed babies and juveniles every 7-10 days and sub adults and adults every 14-16 days.  If I feel like an animal needs to be cut back because of weight gain, I’ll feed about once a month or drop the prey size (different snakes react in different ways).

Feeding Guide - Kara is one of the most well respected breeders in the industry and her animals have never looked obese to me, so her caresheets are good to work off of.

I like leaner bloods.  In fact, I’m sure if I posted all of my pictures onto different blood groups I’m a part of, there would be grumbling about having skinny snakes (I do have some skinny animals that were in bad condition when I took them but they are slowly gaining weight).  Bloods and short tails should have a tear drop shape (think like a cross section), a defined spine, they should be able to curl up without a lot of visible creases/rolls, and the neck and tail areas should have a gradual slope (no hips and no pin head, though tails can get big when they are holding in poop).

Here’s some pictures that also demonstrate that passing a weight judgement off of just one picture from one angle isn’t a great way to tell if an animal is overweight.  These are pictures of a wild specimen and you can see how the weight distribution can change based on angles and how the animal itself is flattening out or tensing up!

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From the over head we can see that she does have a prominent spine (you can compare with the picture of the ivory I shared previously to see how the spine looks more pronounced between the two pictures) but she really looks just fine to me. Keep on your feeding schedule imo, she’s young and she will go through phases of lean as she grows longer, nothing wrong with that!

I feel like bloods and short tails are extremely variable with how each individual grows and puts on weight. I have an animal who is almost two years and is smaller than many other two year olds I’ve seen, but I’m not worried about her. She’s eating, she’s drinking, she’s active, there’s no reason for me to try and cram more food into her just because she’s smaller than other two year olds.

I feel we’re so used to more commonly kept species like balls where we rejoice when they eat anything or seeing retic keepers showing off ‘that bulge’ when they feed their giants pigs and sheep that newer keepers might be swayed away from a longer feeding schedule and smaller prey size when dealing with short tails. It doesn’t help that some of the big name short tail breeders have actually been recorded saying they want their females as fat as possible so they can breed faster and bigger clutches either (even though this has really negative impacts on health and quality of life) :( but most of the good people working with short tails will stick with smaller food and longer feeding schedules.

It’s really important I think to get that advice out in the open to make sure we have healthy and comfortable animals. :) Can’t wait to see her grow up and color change over the next few years with you!

From the over head we can see that she does have a prominent spine (you can compare with the picture of the ivory I shared previously to see how the spine looks more pronounced between the two pictures) but she really looks just fine to me. Keep on your feeding schedule imo, she’s young and she will go through phases of lean as she grows longer, nothing wrong with that!

I feel like bloods and short tails are extremely variable with how each individual grows and puts on weight. I have an animal who is almost two years and is smaller than many other two year olds I’ve seen, but I’m not worried about her. She’s eating, she’s drinking, she’s active, there’s no reason for me to try and cram more food into her just because she’s smaller than other two year olds.

These are all of my babies! (From top to bottom)

Perona / crested gecko Neera / black and white argentine tegu Gamabunta-chan / pacman frog Toothless / northern blue tongue skink Mugen / Sumatran red blood python Elsa / blizzard corn snake

Let’s talk about how amazing the color change can be as a blood matures