stunted corn snake

Question
QUESTION: heya, i asked a question a few months back on a corn snake i got from a friend. she has stunted growth, she was 75cm so 2 and a half feet the last time she shed, but is just over 2 years old, can you remember my previous email? anyways, since ive had her, shes been growing rapidly, both lengthways and outwards! she gave my wrist a bit of a squeeze last week, and shes getting quite strong! but i wanted to ask a few things!
 she is 2 and a half feet long, and about the thickness of my thumb, im 17, so thats around 6cm around (as in if you wrap a tape meaure round). is this a normal thickness for this length of snake? she looks quite slim in comparison to others i have seen, but these were all adults so.. yeh, also, i think shes an okeetee, but she has very little black on her.. it surrounds the dark red patches on her back, but its not very thick, a book i read had a picture of a snake that looks exactly like mine, but it called at an albino corn. all other albino corns have no black at all on them.. is it an okeetee just with thin patches of black? ha ha, and also, can i still expect her to get to a good size? her tank was bought for her to reach between 4 and 5 foot, but i dont know if she will reach that length..? cheers for any help you can give! josh

ANSWER: Hello again Josh, Yes I do remember your previous e-mails quite well. Her size sounds like it is within normal range, both length and width. My yearlings are usually about 18 - 20 inches and are approx. 2 1/2 to 3 feet by around 2 years. She may be just a tiny bit behind schedule due to her slow start but she will catch up. Don't be tempted to power feed her to speed this up. Keep her to a normal healthy feeding schedule and she will grow at a normal healthy rate.  I think I probably mentioned to you before that I have taken in severely starved and undersized snakes and they have gone on to reach average adult size in time. Three and 1/2 to four and a half feet is really the average size range for a corn snake.
Corns without the black pigment are sometimes called red albinos, the correct term is amelanistic (without melanin), they will also have red eyes.Some morphs have heavily reduced melanin and look almost like "red albinos" until you look closely. The term "Okeetee" ended up being used as a marketing device for corns so the definition   of what an Okeetee corn is became blurred. It originally applied to corns caught in the Okeetee region of S. Carolina that typically had deep red saddles surrounded by thick black circles against an orange base colour.For a while it was applied to all corns from that area even if they did not look like that. Now the term seems to have returned to referring to that particular look, deep red saddles and thick circles around them. So no, yours would not be considered an Okeetee by the current defintion.

I've included this link that has little thumbnail shots of the various morphs (there are plenty). You can also check out Kathy Love's site, she and Bill Love originated some of the corn morphs.  


http://www.reptimania.co.uk/cornmorphs.htm

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QUESTION: i found one exactly the same as mine! apparently the skin comes from an  
okeetee crossed with a certain other type of carolina corn, but it didnt explain
much other then that! ha ha, i do have another question though, i dont intend
to power feed her, but im not sure how much i should be feeding her! at the
moment, i feed her a small adult mouse a week, but she still hunts about
after this, so last week a gave her a fuzzy as well, and she went into her hide
to digest pretty fast! is this too much for a snake her size? and i was told at 3
ft, to start feeding every 10 days instead of 7, is this right? and how big a
meal should i have her on then? oh, and how much will a full grown snake
have? thankyou for your help! josh


Answer
Hi Josh, Corns can safely take prey that is a bit thicker then their body at its thickest point, up to 1 1/2 times their thickness.You can use that size rule for their whole life. One rodent, this size, every week should keep your girl growing normally. If the prey is thinner then her body then you can give her two.  I cut mine back to  14 days when they are closer to an adult size of 3 1/2 to 4 feet, but not when they still have growing to do like yours does.  Like any animal, snakes can get overweight. If they are through with most of their growing the extra calories will be stored as fat. My adults get about 3 adult mice per month unless they are breeding.

Corns remain in a rather hyper excited feeding mode just minutes after eating and will always look hungry in that phase. They are also opportunistic feeders and will rarely turn down food even if the amount is enough to cause them to regurgitate.