Feeding Question about my new boa

[pythonguy21]

54 large rats by october omg.

their is only 52 weeks in a year i would even feed a snake that eats year round that many. i wouldn't feed anymore than 26 in a year. thats one every two weeks.
that is just craziness.

[david_loftin]

I really had to come back to this thread. This bothered me a little bit. Just because you BREED something.. doesn't mean that you have to have it pumping out babies every single year. I have been breeding reptiles for quite a long time now.. I hesitate calling myself a 'breeder' because of the negative connotations that come along with that term in this hobby. If you are seeing that kind of dramatic weight loss in an animal that you are breeding maybe you shouldn't be breeding it. Maybe it needs a season off.

I am sorry to go a little off the main topic at hand... but I felt that it was necessary to state my opinion on this.

[JuliusSqueezer]

Crap...I said twice a week! I'm tired. I meant every 2 weeks!...I'll go back and edit that if I still can.

[david_loftin]

Haha.... I JUST noticed that. :scared:

[JuliusSqueezer]

shoot me please. If I keep answering threads tonight, I'm going to kill someone's snake

[ssjsmits]

Originally Posted by JuliusSqueezer

Crap...I said twice a week! I'm tired. I meant every 2 weeks!...I'll go back and edit that if I still can.

Re-read your post previous to this one and tell me what you think.

[JuliusSqueezer]

Thanks...can you add weeks so it says every two weeks? I see what happened now. David said "twice a month"...which is Californian for "every other week" or "every two weeks". I was trying to say "every two weeks but because I had just read his post, "twice a...." came out instead of "every two..." lol

[ssjsmits]

Sure thing. I thought I did that the first time.
.
Moderation Fail!

[pythonguy21]

thinking of giving a adult boa 54 jumbos over a period of months still isnt settling well with me, in fact i cant stop thinking about what its doing to its insides. im going crazy its madness i tell you madness

but seriously 54 by October, is that a mistype.????????

[JuliusSqueezer]

It's well documented that power feeding boa constrictors greatly shortens the lifespan of the animal. I'm not sure what the data is on power feeding adults but if you start a baby out power feeding and continue for over a year, you can expect the snake not to live past 4 years due to it overgrowing in size with organs that are too under developed to keep up.

Overfeeding adult boas typically results in a lot of regurgitations. Whether young or old, they need time to recoup gut flora to properly digest their food. Depleted enzymes don't break it down and it either gets passed with nutrients in the poop that should have been absorbed or just causes bloat from rotting, undigested rodent and puke. Once they begin puking, it depletes even more gut flora and makes it difficult to even feed them on a normal schedule without more puke. They have a slow metabolism and a slow digestion rate (Though somewhat similar, there is a difference). It's unwise to push them to limits beyond their physical ability to properly digest. Snakes continue to grow till they die. Once they reach sexual maturity, linear growth rate slows. They still grow but what was accomplished in feet in early growth is now in inches and later in fractions of inches. Once the growth rate as far as how long they get slows, frequency of food intake needs to be dramatically reduced or they quickly become obese. Obesity is as bad for them as it is us...maybe worse given their sedentary lifestyle. Fat build up around the heart is something they won't cope with for long usually. Females tend to do better than males with it and actually benefit from mild obesity if they are to be bred. They live off the stored fat through their long fast during pregnancy. It usually takes them several months to get back into breeding size/condition and so they usually are still recovering when the next season comes along. Breeding every other year is ok for most if cared for properly. Breeding every year might be survivable for awhile but it takes a toll and really isn't worth it.

I know colubrids are different but...I bought a pair of okeetee cornsnakes several years ago at the Raleigh show. The dealer bragged that he bred the female twice this year and got about a dozen eggs both times. She was pretty plump and really didn't look any worse for the wear...and twice a season for colubrids is doable if the female is of good size...and she was. So I brought them home and set them up in separate cages and was going to wait a year and a half to breed them...giving her a full year off. BUT, apparently she bred a third time before he got them separated. She dropped a load of eggs under her waterbowl. I never found the eggs till I was removing her dead corpse from the cage and cleaning it. The eggs were bad when I found them. I have no idea when she laid them there...so anyway. Be careful with overbreeding them. Even though she may look ready sizewise, she may be taxed nearly to death inside.