Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've seen alot of the boas for sell. Is their husbandry similar to BCI's? How big do they get? Are they fairly easy to breed? & are the babies difficult to raise? I was thinking on getting 1.1 of the Nicaraguans boas and wanted a heads up on em. Thanks for ANY info. Dave

Hi Dave,
Here is some info on Nics......
These Boas, as the name suggests, come from the Central American country of Nicaragua (Click her for Map of the Country) The Boas from this region are rich in both color and pattern. "Circle Back" pattern is the normal look for these beautiful Boa and Greens and orange colors add to their outstanding looks.

Nicaraguain Boas are in the Sub-species fo Boa Constrictor Imperator. The are on the small side of the spectrum of this Ssp. Females will reach adult breeding size at about 4-5 feet in length while males may reach maturity at 3 feet. There is a strong population of Hypomelinistic boas from this region that occur natrually. Bryant King worked with these animals and proved the gene to be genetic and Co-Dominant much like the Salmon Phase of Hypo.
Although these Boas are of BCI ssp, they tend to be on the aggressive side in temperment. There are Hypos, Anerys, and several people working on Ghost Nics which will make them all Locality specific Morphs. Ben Seigel has one animal (I have only seen pictures) That he thinks is a T Albino, Which will make for a nice new morph in this group.
For the most part, they are dark in color with lots of greens and oranges, they are a small mainland boa (maybe the smallest mainland BCI) and they have an incrediable deversity in coloration. Circle Back is the norm for their pattern, and laddertail is fairly common, there main draw back is that they are mean and importants are hard to switch to f/t mice.
Good luck with them
Jim Hopkins

Dave

Hi Jim,

I'm working with a "lot" of Nicaraguan boas and own 2.1 Nicaraguan T+'s as well as a wild caught Nicaraguan Ghost. In addition, I have many hypos, anery's and normals from that region and would agree with you as to their diversity but disagree with you as to their temperament. I found there to be some aggressive babies but overall I have found them to be similar to Brazilian Rainbows that calm down very nicely as older juveniles. I will also say that those aggressive animals have been a small percentage of my collection and most are very docile. I haven't had any problems getting them to eat rats and some have shown incredible growth rates. Below is a Nicaraguan Ghost

np

Hi Dave,

We are working with a large group of Nicaraguans right now, so I will try to answer your questions based on our experiences with them... I hope this helps!

While the temp. requirements and feeding requirements of Nic's are the same as other BCI, I have found that caring for Nic's is a whole lot easier for one very important reason...their size!! Our biggest adult female is barely 6 feet long. Most of our other adult females are somewhere around 5 1/2 feet max. Also, Nicaraguans don't get anywhere near as thick as Colombians. I can easily handle the adult Nic's on my own to clean cages and such, but there is no way that I could handle some of our adult female Colombians without my dad helping...they are just too heavy and muscular for me to move alone. Because of their smaller size, Nic's don't demand the same cage space as Colombians. We are moving all of our Nic's into Roylance rack systems, and I wish I could think of the dimensions of them, but I can't so I will just say that there is no way I would put an adult female Colombian in one of them!

Nic's tend to breed sooner than Colombians or other BCI, and they seem to be easier to breed as well. We haven't had a litter of Nic's born here yet (next season we hope to have lots!) so the only answers I could give you about raising babies would be based on the farm born babies that we have. I have found them to be hardier in some ways than even Colombians. They seem less sensitive in that we have never had a baby regurgitate a meal, and we have LOTS of baby Nics. Sometimes the farm born Colombians will get sick once or twice while they adjust, but the Nics don't seem to have that problem. Some of ours are pickier eaters as Hoppy mentioned, but we have so many that there are bound to be a few in the bunch that are picky. Most of ours eat well. Also, I attribute that to them being farm born as opposed to captive bred. I am thinking that the captive born babies will all be fine. As far as aggression...some of the babies were a little nippy when we first got them, but we just handled them and took a few nips here and there while they were newborns, and now they are fine. I handled almost every single one of our Nics the other day while I was cleaning, and none of them showed the least bit of aggression.

Here's one of our normal Nic's as a baby:

You can see another picture of one of our normals in a post below by my father that was a follow up to a question on smaller boas.

Here's a hypo:

Our Nic Ghost when we first got him:

An adult Type II Anery:

And our favorite, our female T+ Albino Nic!:

That's alot of pics and this was a long post, but I hope it helps!
Amanda

.

np

Amanda or Tom,
Do you have any pics of the t 's as babies from above?
I would appreciate it if you posted one !
Also we all know there are anerys and type II Anerys but the anerys I have gotten this year(three so far, one sold already)
have colombian anery tails, not jet black tails like the adult you posted.
It is more like an anery colombian tail with it bieng darker around the border and lighter grey in the saddle.
Do you have any of these? I am waiting for them to shed and feed before I take pics as they just had a pretty jat lagging flight from Nicaragua.
Mike
M n R-Reptiles
-----
"Quality isn't Quality without customer service so I guess I sell quality"

Here is a picture of one of our male T 's as a baby:

Our Type II Anery's all seem to have the black tail. Here is a pic of one of our younger Type II's. This was taken a year ago, but as you can see he looks like a miniature of the adult in the post above.

I hope this helps!!!
Take care,
Amanda

price on hypos & anery Nics ? Thanks, Dave

:

Those are just outstanding! WOW. Thanks Again Dave