Feeding my Vietnamese Blue Beauty - What do I feed my snake?

There are many options when it comes to feeding:

• Smaller preys quite often (more than once a week)
• Bigger preys less often (usually every 7 days for hatchlings, yearlings and sub-adults, and every 10 to 14 days for adults)
• With / without supplements (calcium or vitamins)

If you wish to feed your snake more than once per week, just bear in mind a snake's digestive process is long and can last up to two days. Thus, it is not really recommended to feed a snake more than once every 4 days, which already seems quite a lot if you ask me. 

Also, snakes are opportunistic feeders: they do not eat because they are hungry but rather because they don't know how many time will elapse between one feed and another, so they feed whenever they have the occasion as a matter of survival. If you offered your snake a fuzzy every 4 days, it would most likely take it, but that does not mean it's hungry nor does it evidence a healthy practice. 

Of course, the feeding options listed above all give different results in growth speed and snake health. I found a very interesting experiment by Snake Bytes TV, the results of which did not exactly match my preconceived ideas. Although it was carried out with corn snakes, I am sure we can extrapolate the results. Watch out!

Feeding experiment: hypothesis

Feeding experiment: the results (starts at 02:07)

The Munson Scale mentionned in the video has been thought for average sized colubrids and is obviously not applicable to VBBs after a certain point, as a sub-adult or adult specimen will most likely weigh over 300 gr. However, until then it can be as good an orientation as any other. 

Snake Weight	Prey Weight	Prey name	Quantity of Preys	Interval
4 – 15 gr	2 – 3 gr	Pinky	1	4
16 – 23 gr	3 – 4 gr	Pinky	2	4 – 5
24 – 30 gr	5 – 7 gr	Small fuzzy	1	5 – 6
31 – 50 gr	7 – 9 gr	Fuzzy	1	5 – 6
51 – 90 gr	9 – 12 gr	Hopper	1	6 – 7
91 – 170 gr	13 – 20 gr	Weanling	1	7
171 – 300 gr	20 – 30 gr	Young adult	1	7 – 10

For those of you who are not familiar with the different mice sizes' names, here is a simple picture (not mine, but I can't find the source):

I personally don't follow the Munson Scale and just go by this rule of thumb: I go up a size when the bulge of the swallowed prey is not really visible once it has gone down half of my snake's body. This worked wonders with my corn, though it might need to be nuanced for my VBB girl. 

Because Vietnamese Beauty Snakes are so slender, it might be a good idea not to go up a size right away, but double the prey items instead for a little while and "upgrade" after that.

Aged 5 months old, I currently feed The Fury as I was told by the seller: 2 pinkies every 7 days. It has been working well so far, as you can see in November snake stats.

I hope this has been helpful.

Scale up!

M.