Reptile & Amphibian Forums

This is my big girl! She is eight years old and a captive bred/born baby. She is 10-11 feet long and is sweet as pie but is a typical Burm when it comes to feeding.
She is in blue in the first few pictures and normal in the last two. What do you think of her????

Yes she is in a smaller quarantine cage for now.
Thank you for looking.
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Christine
Tails With Scales Reptiles
Looks, brains, and venom . . . . how do I stay single?

She looks very nice. kinda small for an 8 year old. I am a big fan of the normals. That is why i like the granites as well.

Yes she is a bit under sized for her age but take heart in that this is not my fault. I've owned her almost two weeks now. Her previous owner was only feeding her 1 or 2 jumbo rats every three weeks. I am feeding a jumbo rat every five days.
Actually since I've had her she's eaten four rats three of which were jumbos the other a large. He (previous owner) told me that she "would not eat or get near a rabbit". So far I've had a 100% sucess rate in get even the most stubborn snakes to change over. Herper friends say I have a gift (from the snake god's). I can get anything to eat!!! Yes I am gloating.
Given her feeding response, acts like she's starving, I have no doubt she'll change to bunnies soon.

I'll take new pictures of her when she sheds out.
Thank you
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Christine
Tails With Scales Reptiles
Looks, brains, and venom . . . . how do I stay single?

"kinda small for an 8 year old"....that's just another incredibly inept and uninformed response from someone who has zero evidence to support such a claim. Sure, we see many grotesquely obese captive burms that reach gargantuan sizes in a short amount of time (I even know of one that reached 16 feet in one year....and died at age 4). Most of these will not live a normal life span due to power feeding, obesity, and lack of exercise and proper environment. Many of these will face all kinds of health problems as well. I am quite confident that a hatchling burm, in the wild, will grow at far more slower growth rates than most captive burms who are overfed and stuffed in cages that are too small. The snake in the pics looks fantastic, is alert, excellent muscle tone and in seemingly perfect health. Kudos to the owner!

Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center

>>She looks very nice. kinda small for an 8 year old. I am a big fan of the normals. That is why i like the granites as well.
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Rob Carmichael, Curator
The Wildlife Discovery Center at Elawa Farm
Lake Forest, IL

"kinda small for an 8 year old"....that's just another incredibly inept and uninformed response from someone who has zero evidence to support such a claim.

It was just my observation, which wasnt far off. I never said I was a certified expert. Many here would agree that at 8 years a female would normally be a big larger.

In my opinion genes play as much a role on overall growth as environment and subsequent nutritional history or feeding regimen, if not more. Just because *some* burmese reach 20 to 25 feet over a lifetime by no means indicates that all burmese will reach 20 to 25 feet on average. These great sizes are extreme rarities and are an exception to the more average sizes normally reached by mature, well fed, healthy burmese. These huge sizes may be the result of genetic predispositions to grow huge and they may be due to malfunctioning or faulty growth glands.

Other, smaller burmese may come from a smaller line (gene pool) of burmese from a completely different regional origin. One never knows. It is like this with all diverse species that cover wide, geological areas. Look at the dwarf burms and dwarf retics surfacing the last decade.

Another case in point, my ceylonese females average 7 to 8 feet tops. Kelly Hallers average 11 to 12 feet. This is an enormous difference in eventual, overall size and I feed mine WELL.

In any event, the average lengths of most mature female burmese fall between 12 and 16 feet. A little less or a little more doesn't really mean much of anything if the specimen is healthy.

This is just my opinion on the subject.
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David Beauchemin
High End Herps.Inc
http://HighEndHerps.com

"Looks, brains, and venom . . . . how do I stay single?"
I love that!

I agree she looks great. And I also agree that to many people are obsessed with blowing these things up. As long as the snake does not look like it is starving why keep pumping food into it to make it grow faster. Just like people, animals grow at different rates. Should I keep feeding my 85 pound Rott more food so she weighs the 100 my other one does. No way, she would be a blimp and be dead by 3.
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0.2 Rotts
1.0 Super Tiger
1.0 Amel Retic
0.1 Ball Python
0.1 Red Tail
0.1 Blood Python
1.0 Green Ananconda
1.0 Emerald Tree Boa

She's lovely. She has a sweet face!

So the clue is to ovoid the obesity? How can I know thata my burms/retic is obese? (pictures please)