Posted by:
Seeves1982
at Wed Apr 6 20:12:19 2011 [ Report Abuse ] [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Seeves1982 ]
I personally wouldn't raise the heat to increase metabolism. I'd just want to keep the animal healthy. Not that once every two weeks is unhealthy. It's true that they go months without food before eating in the wild, but I don't believe that's ideal. Ive heard of temp ranges for BPs from 75-85 all the way up to 85-95. Higher heat will increase metabolism and you can feed more often to increase weight, but I dont like taking the chance of running temps that high. I keep my cages right in the lower middle with a hot spot around 88 and a low around 78,79. I'm not a boa or even bp expert by any stretch and didn't want to come off like I was trying to be one, but I have had several bp from child hood till now. And I remember when I was a kid and got my first bp the guy at the legacies told me they were very sturdy animals and only needed to be fed once a month. But through continuing research through out the years I've found that old information isn't always right. Obviously with breeding as a goal. I want my snake to gain weight steadily and safely and this is what I've found. I have snakes that are growing and at one meal a week they're gaining about 100g a month I've got one that has been feeding only every other week and he's only gaining 50 to 70g a month. And lastly I have an adult who was new to the collection and isn't eating very well. She goes for a meal about every three days and recently lost 100g. From my own research I would say at a minimum every other week of the appropriate sized meal is bare minimum for health. 1 appropriate meal a week I would say is what the doctor called for. You can power feed on five day schedules without getting a fat snake, but in my opinion that's borderline in the other direction. If you choose not to feed rats to your boa I think that would be perfectly fine. And again just my opinion if I was in that scenario I would go every week with an extremely large retired breeder mouse. But I wouldn't suggest higher end temps.
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