Reptile & Amphibian Forums

We put our DH sunglow male in with our possible het a few days ago. The male had been attempting to court and everything was going fine. Tonight I went to check on them before bed and the female was eating the male. His head was in her mouth and he was curled up trying to escape. I quickly pulled the female out to try to get the male free from her. After a few minutes of struggling (and pouring alcohol down her mouth) we got her mouth open, to find out the male was biting her inside her mouth right above the trachea. After prying him out we rushed to the emergency vet hospital (I just got back now at 3am). The female got the worst of it, with a severy bruised mouth. The male has a small abbrasion on his head from the initial strike, and both probably have broken teeth. Theyre both on antibiotics now, and should be fine. I was wondering, does this happen often with breedings? Can it be prevented? I know we got off really lucky this time... I can't figure out what provoked the attack, i'm just glad I went to check on them. Any advice or opionions would be appreciated. Thanks!
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0.1 Het Albino
1.0 DH-Sunglow
1.0 TH-Moonglow

. . . have any lingering scent from a recent feeding ? Do you feed them in their cages ? If so, this might be a reason. I haven't heard of this kind of behavior in courtship.
I'm sure that others can help.
Side note: It is kinda early in the year for breeding. I believe that most people start coupling them up in the fall. But if they'll breed now, why stop them.
I hope they heal up fine for you, David
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I'm just the snake room janitor

I have never heard of anything like that before. I suppose the female was not receptive to the courting and decided to let them male know it. Either that or she caught the scent of rat and it triggered a feeding response. Good Luck Vinnie

Holy smokes....that would freak me out! Glad to hear they are alright. You may want to wash those guys down before putting them together again...lol. Do you keep rats anywhere near them? Or were you messing with rats before that?

Yeah, I was pretty freaked out.. there was an instance which i felt positive that the DH male was dead.. (he kinda went limp, and his neck was extremely twisted). Luckily it happened when my spouse was home or I don't think I could have got them apart in time. The DH was the first breeder we ever bought, and he is definatley my favorite snake- and the only one who hasn't bit me yet! lol. It may have been a rat issue, one of our rats got rather bloodied by a fight with another(we had to seperate him). So maybe the intense smell from a bloodied rat did it. The girl has an excellent feeding response. Just want to thank everyone who responded for helping me find out what went wrong.
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0.1 Het Albino
1.0 DH-Sunglow
1.0 TH-Moonglow

Hopefully they were not 18 months old when you were trying to breed them.

Hope they are doing ok now. Good luck!

.

lol, nah. 22 months and a bit over 3 years ^_^. Thanks though, we'll be keeping a close eye on them... we're not going to be trying them together again til the end of the season, i figure they've both had enough trauma for awhile...
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0.1 Het Albino
1.0 DH-Sunglow
1.0 TH-Moonglow

Sounds good. Hopefully they have a fast recovery.

I also hope you do not get affended by my humor. And I hope you read my defense on the 18 month old breeding thing. As you breed your boas and raise more boas in your collection, you will see what I mean and why I made the decision to breed them.

Good luck next season with those guys. Hopefully next year the female will be a little more receptive. If not try a little BARRY WHITE!

My albino male got hammered by a poss. het female towards the end of their breeding season.My rats are never in the snake room except feeding day, and this particular pair had not been offered food for 5 weeks.Just goes to show how dangerous breeding can be!JOHN

Ouch, was your male okay? Had the female been bred before? Our girl is a virgin, and i'm just hoping this isn't her general stance on mating lol.
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0.1 Het Albino
1.0 DH-Sunglow
1.0 TH-Moonglow

Sorry to hear you had the same problem. I hope both of your boas are doing well. BTW did you get babies out of that breeding?

Last year was a bad year for me.No there were no babies.Yes both animals were fine,the rest is a long story!JOHN

I'm glad both of your snakes are going to be alright. I can only imagine how freaked out your were. That must have been a scary sight.

BTW next time don't pour alcohol down her throat. Ice water will do the same thing and it can't hurt her.

As for why it might have happened......

I've thought about it for a while and I've come up with.....

Maybe she wasn't ready to breed. I know you said that things seemed to be going well, but what if she wasn't ready and just got pissed a him. Was she acting receptive or... Was he trying to breed and she was slapping her tail around? Sometimes a male is all "lets do it" and the female just tries to get away from him. She'll slap her tail around trying to discourage the male. If a female is doing this she might take it a step further and attack the male. I really don't know if this is something that would happen. I do know that I've had females that wanted no part of breeding and did that slapping around the tail thing. When this happens I normally remove the male. I'll feed the female and then 24 to 48 hours later I'll put the male back in. Sometimes the female is more receptive after feeding and sometimes she's not. Until she's receptive I never leave the male in.

Thanks for the icewater advice, haven't heard that one. It was pretty funny, at the ER vet I told them about the alcohol and she said to watch for symptoms of depression and fatigue, pretty much being drunk lol. Luckily she doesn't seem to have had any adverse effects to the alcohol.

When I saw them together she didn't seem to be particular non-receptive, just ignored him for the most part.. I was planning on leaving him in for 3 days to see where it went, this happened on the third day. I guess that night she may have went from ignoring to pissed.

They're both doing fine right now, going to wait for about 2 weeks to try to feed the female because of the bruised area around her esophagus, and going to wait about a week for the male so I can keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't get any mouth injuries that hadn't been noticed.
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0.1 Het Albino
1.0 DH-Sunglow
1.0 TH-Moonglow

Well one year I was walking by the cages of some paired boas and I heard a loud thump against the cage! I quickly rushed over to find the two snakes locked at the mouth.! Originally I thought the big female was trying to attack the male and tried to seperate them with no luck. So I pulled them both out and immersed them in water thinking that would work with no luck. I kept tugging at the female but then I noticed the male kept wrapping around her neck so it was him that was attacking her! It took a good 30 minutes to get them apart with nasty popping noises from the mouth and teeth it was tough to do but I got them both apart and they turned out ok. The worst breeding mishap was with a pair of papuan pythons. I had the male papuan python for about 10 years when this female decided he was lunch of course I didnt see it happen but it was quite sickening to say the least he was a good snake. On another occasion I was putting in a male arabesque boa with a female and she turned around and hammered him, luckily I had him on a hook so she only got the top half of him with her lower jaw hitting the hook she let go and the little guy freaked out. But she came all the way across the cage, I was shocked as that had never happened before. But when you breed boas long enough all kinds of weird things happen!

Wow, some bad luck there. I wonder what provokes this. I was wondering if you cool or not, or if that may even have an impact? Also, did any of the snakes that attacked breed before or since then? We're hoping that theres some circumstances that could cause an attack... since we don't want it to happen again, if its just the female and if she just likes to eat other snakes we definately don't want to risk our male in with her again, but i guess theres no way to tell at this point. This year we were only going to breed this one male to two girls (one at beginning and one at end of season), wanted to do this girl first since the other we'd like to get fed a little longer.. though i guess we'll have to reevaluate now! Thanks for sharing, at least we know it isn't unheard of.
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0.1 Het Albino
1.0 DH-Sunglow
1.0 TH-Moonglow

there is a forum at faunaclassifieds board of inquiry where a female boa killed not one, but two males that were put in with her for breeding
Donna DeYoung
www.andalusianhorseclub.com
Misty River Reptiles

female boa kills male