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Wish she was ready this year!

Hey Matt,

Keep up with the good work. I am similiar to Richard and dont feed my boas (or balls for that matter) much more than 10-14 days. Not trying to be cheap when it comes to feeding close to 100 snakes but, it just seems like slow-grown is so much better for the snake(s) overall health IMHO. Usually, I let the snakes "tell" me that they are hungry (as we all know how a hungry snake responds to you).

Gorgeous snakes too btw, but what else would you expect from Shadera and Matt.
 
Thanks Dean, but my "letting the snakes tell me when they're hungry" might be PART of the reason that I got into my feeding frenzy. I honestly felt that I was "starving" a snake on the occasion that I went as far as 2 weeks (rarely any longer) without giving it a rat! When they've acted hungry, I've always obliged them, thinking I was doing the right thing.

And don't get me wrong, I was happy to see them eat so often, thinking it would benefit me by making my younger ones breed a little sooner, and my breeders give bigger litters. This is going to take some getting used to because I still feel like I'm going to be starving my babies....even though I wholeheartedly believe what I read (written by Gus with Rio Bravo Reptiles). Old habits....ya know?
 
Some snakes are a lot more active and actually hunt their food. Majority of Boids are ambush style, lay and wait, move, lay and wait some more type of hunters.
 
Matt, my first year here in Georgia (yes wer'e neighbors) Bryon and I lost 2 breeder females. We were devastated, took em to AU and sure enough the died from fatty liver disease. That is a great place to get full necro's done at a reaction of the cost, and was a very good yet sad learning experience.

Our motley girl is very lean and almost 5 ears old. As Rick said it best. Too much fat in a Boa equals an early death in most cases. I'd rather have a healthy breed-able 15 year old then a burned out dying 10 yr old any day.
Ball python people often feed to heavy, the whole feed to breed concept often spills over to the boa keepers and we, Bryon and I learned the hard way.
 
Laura Fopiano said:
Matt, my first year here in Georgia (yes wer'e neighbors) Bryon and I lost 2 breeder females. We were devastated, took em to AU and sure enough the died from fatty liver disease. That is a great place to get full necro's done at a reaction of the cost, and was a very good yet sad learning experience.

Our motley girl is very lean and almost 5 ears old. As Rick said it best. Too much fat in a Boa equals an early death in most cases. I'd rather have a healthy breed-able 15 year old then a burned out dying 10 yr old any day.
Ball python people often feed to heavy, the whole feed to breed concept often spills over to the boa keepers and we, Bryon and I learned the hard way.
Click to expand...


Hey Laura,

Thanks for another example, although I'm very sorry that you had to learn in such a harsh way. But I really have listened to Richard's advice, read everything that he pointed me towards, as well as talked to a couple more breeders (strictly boa breeders). And now I'm scratching my head trying to figure out how I was so "off" on this subject.

I've reread and checked back up on every part of husbandry from these same sources. Over feeding seems to be the only place that I was way off so I think I'll be ok, thanks to Richard's bringing this up. And I piled a load of STUFF on top of my chest freezer!!! And I refuse to clean it off before next week.

And just as a "mini-update", I've been getting all of my boas out for close inspections. My '08s and younger (except for one) all seem to be fine; still nice and lean. Unfortunately, all of my '07s and older seem to be a little overweight. Nobody's more than a few poops from looking lean again. My "extreme" over-feeding luckily did not start too long ago when I started feeding like they were balls. Before that, I was still feeding every 7-10 days, except when in shed.

I refuse to feed anyone (hatchling balls NOT included) until next week. After that, I'm going to start a much more strict policy of every other week for the boas. I'm still looking into the balls, but from what I've heard, they're gonna somewhat leaner, too.
 
Just to correct my last post, my strict policy of every other week was supposed to worded, "a strict policy of NO MORE than every other week". ...also didn't mean to say "and" so many times! :D
 
Just wanted to chime in a say that I love it when people don't get all defensive when presented with another way of doing things.

It's awesome that you're thinking about their long term health Matt. Will them bad boys to your kids! :rofl:

I feed my boas very sparingly. Most of them get fed about once a month. Balls are about once a week, closer to every two. It's slow going, but I've got my rats to dink with if I want instant gratification.
 
Laura Fopiano said:
Matt, my first year here in Georgia (yes wer'e neighbors) Bryon and I lost 2 breeder females. We were devastated, took em to AU and sure enough the died from fatty liver disease.
Click to expand...

I remember that conversation. That saddened me too. As much as you two were going through at the time, then to compound it with that. :(

My very first Boa went out like that too. My beautiful Suri. :( My mom and Lloyd kept telling me I was going to kill her feeding her so much. She was an imported sub adult when I got her, I was 10. Then we opened her up in science class 7 yrs later in HS after she passed, and yellow masses of fat every where is exactly what we found. Under the skin, all through the organs, everywhere.

But we didn't know near as much about them back then, so unfortunately I never caught on to the excessive feeding as the cause, and continued for years. I've had many others that only lasted 10-12 years also. With what we know now over 20 yrs later, it finally sank in that I was the cause all along. Or so I truly believe.

On a closing note...How many of the big breeders out there, do you see posting pictures of full grown adult Boas? Just something to ponder. :thumbsup:
 
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