Completely unexpected new arrivals. DUW!

Originally Posted by Charis

I am going to guess that he meant because with GTPs hatchlings to about one year old have delicate spines, delicate enough that most people don't sex them until they are a year old or more, since doing it when they are younger can cause them spinal kinks. Some breeders/keepers advocate not handling neonates at all, for fear of damaging their spines.

Mixture of the risk of spinal injury combined with stress. Most breeders like AT LEAST one year old and a little over 100g before probing. By about one year old I can usually tell by behavior and size who is who so I do not sex until much later usually. Males will usually hit feeding and growth plateaus by about yearling age, whereas females will start to get some of their biggest spurts and, in relation, will be ravenous (remember to still feed in moderation). I have not looked at the pictures closely yet, but they do look like Biaks at first glance, they take a lot longer to complete their full ontogenetic color change than other localities, so do not be surprised if red and yellow sticks around for awhile. Biaks stand out in the crowd pretty easy due to the large head and snout plus slow color change.

P.S. you probably remember me from Pangea, Viridis...have not been online much lately though. Nice to see you again!

Originally Posted by Robert Walker

I know nothing about GTPs as I do ball pythons, why the handling part, just curious?

Oh, hi! That's great to know all of that, thanks! About how often do you feed hatchlings?

Originally Posted by Charis

Oh, hi! That's great to know all of that, thanks! About how often do you feed hatchlings?

Fresh hatchlings eat every 5-6 days, but once established every 7-8 days works great. At about a year old I start going more by individuals, I offer most of the probable boys one every week and the probable gals (the ravenous ones) are sometimes big enough that I take it to every 10 days. As year two approaches everyone is eating every 12-14 days on average. My adults eat 1-3 times a month. Mice always, no rats. Most of that is just me though, after awhile of keeping you will fall into your own little niche in the spectrum of what is proper for the species.

Took some new pictures today of the orange one and Yellow #2, first up is the orange.

And Yellow #2.

New pictures taken 11/20/14 indoors with flash. Really starting to go green.

Taken 11/20/14 indoors with flash. Orange. None of these pictures quite capture it's colors right now, it's kind of a burnt orange/yellow color with a tiny bit of green.













This one is probably the closest in real life color.

I love the second from the bottom! I like to refer to that look as "I'm pretty, now feed me!" LOL

Beautiful snakes.

Amazing and beautiful photos, Thanks for keeping this thread updated... Cant wait to see more of the color change!

Thanks!

The littlest one, nicknamed Yellow #1, hasn't really started to change at all, but then it hasn't been growing much either. It ate for me 3 times after we got it, although it was always a problematic eater but then it stopped eating entirely and I ran out of patience and was getting quite concerned after 70+ days of not eating, so one of our local friends took it, he has a pinky press and lots of experience force feeding snakes, which I was starting to think might be required. But it actually took a live mouse from him the first time he tried to feed it. He breeds mice and has better access to live. So he is going to get another 5 or 6 meals into it and then might give it back to us or might keep it, we haven't decided yet. It's now had two meals with our friend.

My husband really wants to breed these down the road but I'm not sure I have the patience to get the babies started. Maybe with another few years of breeding our other snake species under our belts, I'll feel more up to the challenge, though arboreals are in a whole other category on feeding, so not sure how much practical practice I'll get from our non arboreal snakes ...