Please share Candoia breeding experiences

Sorry I screwed up that first copy and paste


I will try again!!



Here's a new born litter of Candoia carinata paulsoni. It's been a couple years since I had a litter, but here we go again... Shoestring time..
I've been breeding this species for about 20 years.. These are F3 or F4, I've lost track but the adults were produced by me, from ones produced here, and so on.
This is a very young female that produced this litter... She is pictured here in the "cage" she was raised in, which is only a shoebox Rubbermaid, as a size indicator, the water bowl is a Dollarama ramakin bowl, the 2 for a buck size.
Some of the babies have cool patterns.
There were 16 babies, one slug.. One baby is kinked but there are 15 good ones.

I have loads of experience raising this species.. You don't even try to feed them on their own till xmas. Babies eat jumping frogs in the wild, and that is
pretty hard to emulate in captivity, so I don't bother even trying.
They go straight on the pinky pump, with Fancy Feast beef and liver cat food. I've been doing it that way for years. (pinkies are too valuable.. need them for my rubber boas)
Most will be eating pinkies by the spring after their second or third shed.

They can be sexed the day they are born... The males have huge claws, the females have none.
They do soak sometimes, but sitting in water is also caused by temps being too high, the need for a hiding spot, or mites... so consider all those as well.
Candoia don't like high temps and females won't even thermoregulate like most boas.. They will avoid temps over 85... No sitting on 90 degree hot spots for Candoia. This also explains why they have fairly long gestation periods. 6 or more months

I use the same containers sometimes without removing the marking on them. I think the female is likely a 2000 but the males are younger.
I'm pretty sure those males are siblings and from this litter born Sept 24/04, so that would make them 3 years old.

Zoe, you have that big Red one Right? Is it the same one in Melly's gallery, it looks a bit the same. There are several nice red ones around and they keep get flipped from one novice keeper to another... Someone should gather up all those red ones and buckle down to breeding them.
I suspect you've greatly under estimated her age. That one is probably wild caught and likely over a decade old... It takes them a very long time to exceed 3 feet even in captivity, so probably much longer in the wild.

Here is a couple pics of Roy Stockwell's Candoia.

I found this older post from Roy so I thought I would paste for you to view.




I have produced Candoia with only one male..There were several years, I was down to only one male and I still produced babies. It's not true that you require multiple males... It isn't a bad idea, but it's no different from any other Boid in my experience.
When females are building up follicles in preparation for ovulation, they will binge feed... You'll notice an increase in alertness and they tend to jump at anything that moves... Mine will strike the cages with any shadow or hand that passes by.

When they get into this elevated hunger mode, that is the time to feed them heavily, and they should be taking medium rats weekly...
They will only ovulate if they are ready.. I wouldn't worry so much about if she is read or not... Mother nature will look after that.
If she doesn't have enough weight, she just plain won't produce babies..

This increased hunger generally happens this time of year into the winter.
They breed in the spring when temperatures rise back up to normal.
Conditioning for Candoia involves only slight night dips, down into the low 70' but this must be followed up with day time highs in the 80's.
Candoia are very sensitive to RI's and will get the pops and clicks easily if stressed or cooled for too long.

If yours is feeding well, start packing the rats to her and she should be breedable next spring if you have a male. Males don't eat at all once the breeding season starts, so they should be fed well late summer into winter. It's normal for males to go up to 6 months without food.

Last copy/paste I think I should share.



Solomons... progress report



It takes baby Solomon Island boas a bit of time, assist feeding, pump feeding and scenting, but eventually they start eating on their own..
Here's a shot of 6 that just ate good sized pinkies all on their own.. no scenting... so the hard work pays off with some time. 8 of 16 have now eaten on their own
They are from this litter born the end of September 07

Great info thanks for sharing. Good insight & interesting methods. I'd be scared to try to pinkypump babies that tiny! Luckily being in FL sm frogs aren't too difficult to find.

Jay

Originally Posted by Helenthereef

You're completely right, and if there was a vet who knew anything about reptiles in the country I'd certainly do it. Unfortunately Fijian vets concentrate on cows and pigs, and the SPCA runs without a vet for much of the time, getting short term overseas vets in to do cat and dog neutering when they can. There was one vet who did manage to do surgery on a snake (removing a damaged eye) but she's moved on, and I don't think she'd have had much info on reptile diseases.

This is one of the things that had made this forum so valuable to me; a source of advice and others' experiences when I'm pretty much out here in a vacuum, so I really appreciate hearing other people's stories and ideas.

My female should be thinking of dropping her litter fairly soon - by my calculations early to mid May, and I'm going to try two things:

1. MUCH more humid conditions - last time I relied on our normal atmospheric conditions (80 - 85 % or higher most days) plus, of course a bathing bowl, but had them on dry newspaper substrate. This year I'm going for a wet paper towel or cloth substrate and wet sphagnum moss (with climbing branches so they don't HAVE to sit wet) for at least the first few weeks, and misting.

2. Keep them on parts (tails, back legs) of larger geckos rather than whole small geckos for as long as I can in the hopes of avoiding gut-based parasites. I didn't seem to have trouble until I started them on entire geckos last time.

I don't have a source of clean feeder rodents, but when they are big enough, I move them onto day old chicks, supplemented by frozen chicken portions for a bit more muscle mass. This seems to work well, the difficulty is they take a couple of years to get large enough to take chicks, so the middle phase is a range of gecko sizes, plus sometimes small pieces of chicken designed for human consumption. Obviously they eat wild-caught geckos when they are in the wild themselves, but it is possible that only few of them make it to maturity in the wild.

From what you, and others I have contacted are saying, they do not seem to have a low survival rates when bred in "Real World" captivity, which is one of the things I wanted to know. It's possible that in the wild they simply do not all survive - that's often the case with animals that have large numbers of offspring at a time.

Now I just have to work out how best to tread the line between wild mortality and better captive conditions.

Thanks for the interest, looking forward to hearing how your Candoia are going.

ahh i see your dilema........ that is a tough situation to deal with, my best advice with this then is to continue doing research on your dilema and then contacting breeders seeing how they raise them compared to how you are, chances are you'll find something maybe they're doing that you're not or vice versa.

Thanks for all the responses, sorry I didn't comment earlier, I've been out and about away from the keyboard.

My Candoia bibroni bibroni just gave birth, but I had very few survivors See posts:

The Good News (photos of live neonates)
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...d.php?t=398857

The Bad news (photo of dead neonates)
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...d.php?t=398859

Would appreciate any comments or insights.

Please continue to post any experiences, They are all very helpful, and hopefully not just to me

My candoia c p is sweetheart never bit or acted aggressive. I had a viper boa once and got bit frequently. I would be holding it fine then all of a sudden bam. My ground boa I could reach right in and pill her out of her hide rock and she is fine. I don't hold her often either. I also had a pair of amazon tree boas the male bit me all the time and the female was jumpy but never bit me. Sometimes I think every individual snake is different.

Of the five adult Candoia bibroni bibroni I currently have, two are ridiculously handleable, literally walking out of the tank onto my arm when I open the door, two are puppy tame but have to be woken up and picked up to come out, and one is a tree bound Bh who I have to peel off the branches wearing gloves...

And people think reptiles don't have character....