Am I over feeding?

Hi, I have a 4 year old Chilean Rose who moulted 3 weeks ago, and what a beautiful spider she turned into. From orange brown into a beautiful pink rose colour.

Anyway, she didnt accept food 3 weeks to moult which i know is normal. But since her moult, she is eating 3-4 large crickets a day. Sometimes she flicks them away, but 8 out of 10 she pounces on and gobbles them up.

Am I over feeding?

Can you over feed a Tarantula?

Surely, if she is eating them, then I cant see it being a problem??

Thanks,

Dave

Dolly said:

Hi, I have a 4 year old Chilean Rose who moulted 3 weeks ago, and what a beautiful spider she turned into. From orange brown into a beautiful pink rose colour.

Anyway, she didnt accept food 3 weeks to moult which i know is normal. But since her moult, she is eating 3-4 large crickets a day. Sometimes she flicks them away, but 8 out of 10 she pounces on and gobbles them up.

Am I over feeding?

Can you over feed a Tarantula?

Surely, if she is eating them, then I cant see it being a problem??

Thanks,

Dave

Click to expand...

Rosies have a super slow metabolism. What size is your little eight legged friend? If she's big enough to eat 3-4 large crickets a day then I'm betting she's full grown, as such you really only need to feed her maybe 3 large crickets once a week, or even 2 weeks really. Unless she is a mature female and you have a mature male and are conditioning her for breeding she won't need that much and she may eat that way for a while but soon enough she will start a fast. This species is known for going on long, very long, fasts. There have been people on this board who's rosies have fasted for 6 months, 18 months even. The record for a G. rosea fast was reportedly 3 years!



welcome to the hobby! welcome to the boards here, just poke around a little. Read everything you can that interests you. There is a vast wealth of knowledge here from hobbyists that have been keeping and breeding tarantula's since the beginning of the hobby.

ratluvr76 said:

Rosies have a super slow metabolism. What size is your little eight legged friend? If she's big enough to eat 3-4 large crickets a day then I'm betting she's full grown, as such you really only need to feed her maybe 3 large crickets once a week, or even 2 weeks really. Unless she is a mature female and you have a mature male and are conditioning her for breeding she won't need that much and she may eat that way for a while but soon enough she will start a fast. This species is known for going on long, very long, fasts. There have been people on this board who's rosies have fasted for 6 months, 18 months even. The record for a G. rosea fast was reportedly 3 years!



welcome to the hobby! welcome to the boards here, just poke around a little. Read everything you can that interests you. There is a vast wealth of knowledge here from hobbyists that have been keeping and breeding tarantula's since the beginning of the hobby.

Click to expand...

dang! I really hope my rose hair doesn't fast that long! it been like 2 1/2 weeks since my rose hair has last eaten.

Dolly said:

Hi, I have a 4 year old Chilean Rose who moulted 3 weeks ago, and what a beautiful spider she turned into. From orange brown into a beautiful pink rose colour.

Anyway, she didnt accept food 3 weeks to moult which i know is normal. But since her moult, she is eating 3-4 large crickets a day. Sometimes she flicks them away, but 8 out of 10 she pounces on and gobbles them up.

Am I over feeding?

Can you over feed a Tarantula?

Surely, if she is eating them, then I cant see it being a problem??

Thanks,

Dave

Click to expand...

Absolutly you are over-feeding...big time. Pics of the t please, "years old" means nothing, DLS is a far better to give us. And pics ALWAYS help.

Like mentioned, this species grows slowly and has an equally slow metabolism, and thereby quite a low requirement for food. After molting all t's are at their hungriest, and a little extra the first several feedings is appropriate, but what you're giving goes way beyond that. An adult of this species will get very fat on 2-4crickets per month. 1 single cricket every 7-14 days is appropriate, there's NO reason to feed multiples with this species, its not a big tropical.. Stuffing her full of food will not only bring a fasting episode on quicker, but will cause that episode to last much longer. They are NOTORIOUS for their long fasts. 3-6 months is nothing at all for them and is actually very normal, a year or more is not at all unheard of (mines went over 13 months without food in the past).

"Surely if she is eating them, then I can't see it being a problem??"

How do you come to that logic? If I kept eating cheeseburgers non-stop, it would be a problem at some point...If I fed my dog non-stop, it would quickly become a problem, etc, etc.

Browse around here on AB, there is more info on this species than you could shake the proverbial stick at.

666, 2 1/2 weeks...from a rosehair standpoint, that's not even fasting yet, just normal operating procedure....lol. Don't freak when it goes half the year, its pretty normal for a winter shut down at some point.