Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i have heard a lot of thing as my post said befor i got my guyana boa today. how big do they get full grown.i was told by somone 8 ft then 10 foot by another iv had them fluctuating those r the 2 mot common answers i got.i just wanted to know if anyone knows a way that i could keep it around 8 ft?

thanx ahead

josh

I won't chastise you for not doing all your homework before hand because it's a bit late now, and lets face it that's not being very constructive.

First point I will address is the question "is there anything I can do to prevent it growing more than 8ft?". The answer here is that beyond genetics (which you can do nothing about) a snake's size is dependant on health and propper husbandry. If you are a lousy keeper and the snake is underfed, unhealthy, and living in substandard conditions it likely will not reach full potential adult size. This should NEVER be an option, so in short. If this sounds like a reasonable option, then you have no business owning this animal or any other. If you plan to care for your animal as you should (as I will assume you do), then no there is nothing you can do.

Now to the size questions. What you must first realize is that boas are sexually dimorphic, simply males and females will reach noticably different adult sizes. Males being smaller than females, they will likely not reach much more than 7 feet anyway, so here you're OK. Females however will certainly exceed 8 feet and may even reach or exceed 10 feet for this type of boa. But again in you're favour, boas are fairly slow growing animals and by the time she reaches that size you will likely be quite prepared, if not eager. As a mater of fact I would wager that most B.c.c. on this forum have not reached 9 feet yet.

I trust you will do more homework in the future, even if it's just asking on the forums for good and accurate info. And don't frett too much about the size of your animal right now, just focus on husbandry, as true B.c.c. are not as easy to keep properly as B.c.i. and for a new boa keeper (I assume this based on your questions) that is a considerable task.

Best wishes
Gary D.

ok you see the thing is i was planning on a suriname not a guyana this is not my first snake with this one i have 4 at the time. i was looking for somthing as a young snake and all the surinames were 5 feet already i wanted to have it as a baby and raise it up as with all my snakes. so the guyana looked alot like the suri it is a bcc whick is what i was looking for(also eyeing bco's) i went ahead and bought him i am only asking if it would stay at 8 feet because of building the cage. and yes this is a female.

thanx for the reply

josh

First i would like to commend Gary for his reply and not taking the usaual route and doing the degrading and harsh comments on the negative sides of your questions.Secondly if your question was in regards to housing the snake as a adult and not to the overall size of the snake as a adult i would say that you should have no more problems housing this snake then say a BCI or BCO as a adult for the reason that the overall requirements for a adult boa are basically the same size from species to species ( less the anacondas) currently i have several boas and all which are housed in different enclosures, the largest is a approximately 8-81/2 male suri which lives very comfortably in a 4 x 2 x 2 he has ample room to roam in this , now some will tell you they need a larger enclosure closer to 6x3x2 or something along this line which may be true IF you want them to have just more cruising room .As for mine he will usally stay in one side in one postion until dark. then he does his cruising.but the most important thing is to never try to reduce the size of anything mother nature has made by reducing food input to keep it small as Gary has expressed its only going to hurt the outcome and only the snake will suffer not you.Good luck and ask lots of question asking a question now is better then asking for answers later . take care
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