hi everyone I have a question about feeding my baby corn snake what is power feeding is it good or is it bad I need to know so I can take the best care of my baby girl(no dark spot just under vent)thank you in advance ohh later on I might try the breeding stuff with her and a boy I will be getting at the reptile show october 1 here in tampa thanks Robert Wright

Feeding a baby corn should be one pink every 5 dys till they are of a size to move to Fuzzies...and you take that rule of thumb though the entire life of the Corn snake.

Power feeding is when you feed the snake very fast and items that are a little too large. So, you feed the snake every 3 days, and you move to fuzzies before the snake is really big enough for it. Power feeding is known to cause a loss in lifespan, health problems, obecity, and rapid growth. Some people do this to snakes to get them up to breeding size and weight faster, but then end up burning the snake out too fast.

IMO it is a very bad practice, and a lot of other herpers will probably agree.

__________________
Paul

Everything is do-able in life, you just need to know how to do them to get them done.

PCar's Reptiles

Robert,
Are you refering force feeding ? If that is the case it can be dangerous and only used as a last resort. If by power feeding you mean feeding more than what the snake needs for the purpose of it reaching a specific size, that is also not good.

__________________
Ken
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem." -- Ronald Reagan

I feed once a week...I wouldn't power feed either...I've heard it's really bad for the snake...

__________________
~Juliane~

Power feeding is very bad. Your snake grows fast, but won't live nearly as long. I have heard professionals who I don't consider to be 'bad guys' advocate short-term power-feeding for very thin specimens, females just after egg-laying, and other special cases. However, if you power-feed these animals enough to cause them to regurge (not unlikely, since they're probably already stressed and having 'issues'), they'll be much worse off than if you had slowly tried to re-condition them.

ETA: With power-feeding, it can also be tricky to make sure your snake is fully digesting and passing its meals. If it has trouble in that area, you may not notice until you have already compounded the issue with the power-feeding.

I agree with all the others,that powerfeeding reduces the snakes life and is just a way to make the snake grow much faster,which is unhealthy for the animal.We have a responsibility for the animals we keep and people who powerfeed just to get them breeding faster don't deserve to have snakes;that's my opinion.It's a disgrace to the hobby.
I think it's nice to see them growing up and enjoing the babies,because even with no powerfeeding they grow quite fast.You should enjoy every day of their babyhood.

Powerfeeding is unhealthy. It shortens the lifespan and overworks the digestive tract. It can also produce "pinheads" in effect the snakes body grows too fast for its head and organs to keep up. Not a healthy situation.

__________________
Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!