Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This young colombian has been eating 3 adult mice a week for about 4 months and I have been getting larger mice about every other week. Yesterday, he ate 2 mice about the size he has been eating. He still looked hungry and I had a few huge mice that were for one of my ball pythons. I didnt think there was any way for him to eat them... but I was curious (this rt eats live out of my hand while I hold the mouse's tail) anyway, immediately he struck and killed the mouse. Then another that was about the same size. I couldnt believe that he ate all of that. Just look at how full he is!

well that one is going to get huge and live a long time!
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True Redtails

n/p

Anyone?

Jason Gonzalez

OVERFED???????

Maybe just my opinion, maybe nobody else wants to say it but SLOW down dude. Just because they will eat it does not mean they should be allowed to.

In the wild snakes are opportunistic feeders, may go weeks or months between meals and when they do find food, they will eat all they can.

In captivity, they can easily be exposed to much more food and much more frequently than in the wild. We have to monitor their intake and the consensus of opinion is they seem to be healthier long term if raised slower.
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Thanks,

Dave "Rainbows-R-Us"

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB)
4.12 Brazilian Rainbow Boa
2.1 Hypomelanistic BRB
0.1 Het for Hypomelanistic BRB
0.1 BCI "Elvira" normal from 1989
1.0 BCI albino / het-anery
0.1 BCI Hypo / het-albino
0.1 BCI Anery / het-albino
0.1 BCI Hypo (possible super)
1.0 BCI albino het stripe
1.0 BCI salmon hypo
0.1 BCI ghost

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

not in the Boas best interest that you hold it after it having had such a large meal.

and probably not in your best interest to feed it live prey items in your hand. it may be fun now, but when the boa is seven feet long and accidently strikes you in the face it won't be so cute.

the best advice I can give you is to SLOW DOWN! by feeding that boa that much food you are just asking to have it regurge, which will cause you big time problems and could easily lead to the death of such a young boa. I'm truely surprized that it hasn't regurgitated already with that amount of food in it, it might still regurgitate in a few days though. you shouldn't be feeding multiple prey items per week, or more than one prey item per feeding. all you are doing by feeding him so much is shortening his life span and lessening your chances of keeping him alive into adulthood. one prey item about the same with as the thickest part of his body per week or every 10 days is what you should be feeding him at that age

I DO NOT powerfeed any of my snakes. The 2-3 mice that he gets per week are never thicker than the thickest part of his body and normally a good bit smaller. They are always digested in less than 2 days and rarely can you even see a lump the day after he feeds. I bought him last summer as a baby so now he is probably about a year old and still small, I think that shows that I am not trying to pump him full of food so that I can have a monster snake. Normally I would not even try to feed him that much, however, it has been 3 1/2 weeks since the last time he ate, he was going into shed one week, refused the next, and I was out of town for the third. I feed him by hand because he hasnt been the smartest striker in the past, he used to try and strike the mouse on the side and I havent been succesful in switching him over to f/t yet.
I know that all of you who responded are just looking out for the best interest of the snake and I appreciate that.

In your first post it says that you fed him three adult mice a week for four months. Just by looking at the size of that boas head and the picture of him after he ate, in my opinion three adult mice a week would be power feeding. Even if he digesting them quickly. From what I have read boas will actually eat themselves to death. One, maybe two adult mice every 10 days would be plenty in my opinion. Very beautiful boa though.
Michael Burton

Just feed the boa 1 appropriate sized rat every 7-10 days.

feeding 2-3 prey items a week is pretty much power feeding the boa. technically you would have to force the food down the snakes throat to "power feed", but since the animal doesn't really know any better than to eat when there is food you are essentially power feeding or severely over feeding. the reason that you should feed only one per meal as I understand it is because even though boas have the ability to expand their stomachs width wise, they can not stretch it out length wise, so if you are stacking multiple prey items one after the other in the boas stomach it will not all be able to fit in to the stomach to be digested. all the portions that are outside of the stomach will rot quickly, which will poison and kill the snake if it does not regurgitate it out. have you ever left a dead rat in a very humid, hot environment for more than a day? I have and I can tell you that they get very nasty very quickly( the worst smell I have ever had the displeasure of smelling) so imagine your snakes boddy as the hot humid place and think about what that quickly rotting rodent could poison him with. and once you have a young boa regurgitate, if you are not very very very careful about how you handle the problem the boa can go down hill very quickly.

you have to remember that snakes are not like mammals, or even lizards, they do not have to eat on a regular basis to stay healthy. they are designed to go much much longer than 3 weeks with no food and still be perfectly fine. so it would not hurt your boa at all to go 3 weeks without food (I'm sure that little guy could go much longer than that with no problems). and if they do go long periods with out food you do no need to make up for the lost meals with extra food it won't do them any good.
the bottom line is that if you keep feeding the way that you are feeding you will either kill the boa before it reaches adult hood or severly shorten the snakes lifespan to only a handful of years instead of 20-30.

and as for the hand feeding, if he is not a good striker buy some tongs and feed him with tongs; or easier still just drop the (dead, please only feed him prekilled or f/t rodents ) mouse in the cage near him and let him crawl up and grab it. even if he doesn't see it at first he will go and get the food quickly. by feeding from your hand you are only asking for trouble for both you and the boa. snakes are not very smart, but they can make connections between events. so if you feed the boa from your hand he will eventually realize that whenever he see's your hand he should start striking- because surely food will be coming from it. that makes things very difficult for the keeper because every time you go to change water dishes or simply handle the boa he will be looking to grab the food from the hand that he knows always(in his simple mind) brings him food. snakes aren't really bright enough to understand the concept of not bitting the hand that feeds them, haha

good luck, and I hope that you take all the advice everyone gave you to heart.

Jon

You did that just to satisfy your own curiosity? Perhaps in the future you could simply ask for feeding horror stories and someone who has dealt with snakes that have been allowed(on purpose, or accidentally) to over eat will chime in. Like me...I am no expert, but know that a 6 week old boa can eat its own weight, + 2 adult mice at one sitting!
Looking at that one, I don't know what I would hope for honestly. I don't like to wish regurge on anyone, but if that snake keeps that thing down, it is going to rot and swell much faster than it can digest.However, judging by your post, I am guessing that if it were to regurge, you would feed it the same day just to make it feel better.




This is the one that ate its sibling after each of them had eaten a mouse.
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Davey Giltner

Daveyfig do you know if that snake survived? If so, did it grow faster and grow larger than its other siblings?
Michael Burton

what ever ended up happening with that little one? I remember when it happened but can't remeber the outcome? I was just thinking about this the other day.

Ruben Michel

Baby boas are alot like children, just because a child wants 25 candy bars, and could eat them, doesn't necessarily mean it is good for them. About 6 or 7 years ago, we purchased our first boa, well he had us fooled into thinking he was starving to death, so not knowing any better,we were feeding him every day. After about a week,the guy we were buying the food from asked us if we had acquired more snakes, and that was why we were buying so much food. When we told him no, he then discussed the dangers of overfeeding. He told us flat out, if we continued at this rate he would die! Why take an animal that could possibly live for 30 years, and shorten its live expectancy, because it will eat itself to death? Or best case scenario, it would live for a long time, and then drop over dead from a heart attack, caused by obesity. Sorry to be longwinded, but this is a very sore subject for me. Love and care for your boas, as you would your children. They don't know what's best for them!!!!!!!