Jamaican Boas Breeding

It appears as though T1 has eaten yet another anole last night. This brings the tally to:

12/21 - Anole #1 eaten
12/24 - Anoles 2&3 eaten
12/25 - Anole #4 eaten
12/26 - Anole #5 eaten

This is quite more than I had anticipated. I am going to suspend this experiment, at least temporarily, and may try again to do something similar after T1 has had some time to digest.

Feeding update for this week:

All holdbacks were offered the usual thighs
The two stubborn non-holdbacks were also offered the usual thighs
the scented-pinkie eaters were offered pinkies that had been scented with chick thighs and heads (and I made an effort to squeeze some of the heads to increase the amount of juice that was scenting the pinkies)
Of the three unscented pinkie-eaters, the two reliable ones were offered unscented pinkies, but the one that has refused the last few times was offered a scented pinkie to see if that puts him back on feed
T1 is on a break after consuming 5 anoles in as many days
T3 has been moved to a similar experiment where he was placed in a screen cage with abundant anoles to see how often he feeds, how many anoles are eaten at a time, and how long it will take to consume all 12.

I will update with results tomorrow.

Not the greatest night

All holdbacks and the two stubborn thigh-eaters ate with no issues
Of the two that were fed unscented pinkies, only one ate. Both of these have been eating regularly
The former unscented pinkie eater did not eat, despite being given a scented pinkie this time
Of the scented pinkie eaters, only 3 out of the 8 ate their scented pinkie
T3 ate one anole on Night 1.

I'm not quite sure what happened to the eating rate from two weeks ago. It could be a number of things. This could be a natural, winter slowdown, as my adults have also stopped eating. The problem with that theory, however, is that the adults have had their heat shut off and their lighting decreased, and no such measures have been taken for the babies. In addition, all of the chick thigh eaters and anole eaters are still eating normally. It could be that the season has caused them to be somewhat less hungry, and therefore less likely to take an non-preferred food, but I don't know that this is the case.

They could also still be pouting about last week. The larger pinkies (which they may or may not have attempted to consume) could have caused them some stress, which I have thoroughly documented will impact appetite. If this is the case, I would expect most of them to come back around next week.

The third theory is that some minor change in the routine either helped some of them to switch up to scented pinkies and has failed to be replicated, or that some minor change now is preventing them from eating. Possible issues (things I haven't really been tracking) are:

Feeding order
Exact temperature of food
Exact time of day
Rodent supplier

Not sure what the issue is, but as the troublemaker group has shown, these guys are more than capable of going a considerable time without eating with no ill effects, so I am not in any rush to make changes. I will try this week's regimen again next week and see if there is any improvement. If not, then I will start cycling chick thighs back into the rotation and see if that improves the response rate.

Originally Posted by cguarino30

T1 is on a break after consuming 5 anoles in as many days.

!

Great report as always!

interesting stuff going on.....

I think we worry too much in general about regular eating schedules. After all, in the wild they don't choose how often to eat, they just snap something up when the opportunity arises, so I think the natural eating pattern is much more "gorge and fast" than we allow for in captivity.

Having said that I know how anxiety-arousing a non eating baby is, and it's surely not a coincidence that so far it's just the pinkie eaters.

I'm sure you're on the right track by offering food and not worrying too much if they take some time off. Looking forward to further updates.

Originally Posted by Helenthereef

interesting stuff going on.....

I think we worry too much in general about regular eating schedules. After all, in the wild they don't choose how often to eat, they just snap something up when the opportunity arises, so I think the natural eating pattern is much more "gorge and fast" than we allow for in captivity.

Having said that I know how anxiety-arousing a non eating baby is, and it's surely not a coincidence that so far it's just the pinkie eaters.

I'm sure you're on the right track by offering food and not worrying too much if they take some time off. Looking forward to further updates.

All good points, Helen. That's part of the reason why I'm doing the anole experiments. I want to see what kind of feeding rate we see when the snake gets to choose. They've already shown they can go a few months without feeding and still have the strength and function to start up again, so I try not to get too stressed out about missed feedings.

Well now, this is a very interesting development in the T3 anole experiment. Today, T3 is noticeably full. Clearly, he has eaten more. Where there were 11 live anoles in the cage yesterday, now I can only count 8. What's more, there are two dead ones lying on the bottom of the cage, and appear to have been rather clearly killed by constriction (there is a clear bend in them in the middle, and they are both upside down. I'm not sure if this means they were killed in the process of constricting another (I have seen the adults constrict multiple food items while in the process of eating one) or if the additional kills occurred after T3 had already eaten, and T3 chose to simply leave them after constriction. I have also seen similar behavior from some adults, most notably Montego, the sire, who will sometimes strike and constrict a food item, then discard it because he is either full or simply off feed. Of course, there is a third option that they just chose this particular night to die of some other cause, but that seems somewhat unlikely. I will monitor the next few days carefully to try to ascertain what is happening here. I have attached photos of T3's giant belly and the anoles.

Night 1- Anole 1 eaten
Night 2- Anole 2 eaten, two additional dead

My little carpet python refused f/t for several weeks after I brought it home, so I finally drove 1.5 hours to get live feeder mice. First I offered a fuzzy, which the python took and constricted, then finally abandoned after a couple minutes of examining the carcass. Then I offered a hopper, which it also took and constricted, then finally swallowed. Since then I haven't had any problems feeding f/t hoppers several times, and the last feeding was a live fuzzy since my breeding mice are now producing.
I thought snakes only killed what they would eat, but apparently that's not always the case. I'm thinking it was a similar deal with the anoles, instinct was to kill but for some reason they were't eaten afterward.

That's my thinking as well. I used to have a Brazilian rainbow that would slam absolutely anything that crossed its nose, be it live, dead, or a human hand (ask me how I know) but would often completely refuse to eat it. He was a great snake, but certainly frustrating because every week it took 20 minutes to figure out if he was hungry.