Reptile & Amphibian Forums

My bullsnake was hatched on September 12. I've had him since he was nine days old. His enclosure is four feet long. And he is only a few inches shorter than it is! The enclosure next door to his is thirty inches long, and he was longer than THAT one in November. He's still skinny and young-looking, but he's gone from fuzzies to weaned mice!
The vendor I got him from told me that the guy he got him from breeds them for size, and the parents were eight feet and ten feet.. you know the schpiel. Everybody's got a world record bull snake until the tape measure comes out. I didn't really worry about it, because eight feet, four feet, it wasn't a big deciding factor for me. If it's tame, brightly colored, healthy, and acts like a Pit, then I'm okay with it. Haven't had one since my pine snakes, but wanted to go that route again. Then he doubled in length in the first two months, and kept growing, and I started wondering.
I always had the impression that bulls tend to be similar in length to Northern Pines, but this guy is fed LESS frequently than they were, and was as long at two months as they were at a year! Is this a normal thing, and he'll probably slow down and start beefing up more once he approaches normal length? Or do the ones that grow like this tend to wind up being the seven-foot-plus monsters?
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0.1 1987 Coastal Carpet (Boots)
0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bull (Winkle)

So you're saying this snake was born September 12 or what year? No way is this snake 3 months old and almost 4 feet. Absolute BS.

Jeremy

He was 48 grams when I got him. I'll re-weigh him soon and dig through the baby pictures and try to find something in scale to compare to a newer shot. I'm not saying he's over three feet and BUILT like a normal bullsnake; right now he's all gangly, more like a lot of young corns get before they fill out. His head is smaller than the tip joint of my pinkie, and his body is like my index finger. But he can slurp down a 21-gram mouse now pretty quickly. (I started with the smallest hoppers in the 100-bag, which I'd have called fuzzies, and worked his way up to the largest. And, yes, there are other snakes eating, I haven't fed him almost a hundred mice in one month! Although he'd probably let me.
Nevr posted pictures here before and got to go Christmas shop this afternoon and work tonight. When I get back I'll have a go at uploading some pics. Maybe somebody will be able to tell me what locale he is, too, then.
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0.1 1987 Coastal Carpet (Boots)
0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bull (Winkle)

OK, I'm stumped. Photo servers hate me. Might be this weekend before I have time to figure out what I have to do for pictures, but in the meantime, anyone who wants to see the few baby pictures I've got and something more current, just PM me and we can do email. I'll crack the code when I have more time though.

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0.1 1987 Coastal Carpet (Boots)
0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bull (Winkle)

I think you've got it set to not allow PM messages in you user pref?

I tried and it said something about this user has chosen not to allow communication through this form or something like that?

Jeremy

I'll check that right now then. Thanks.
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0.1 1987 Coastal Carpet (Boots)
0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bull (Winkle)

"Sorry, this party prefers not to be contacted through this form."

That's what I get when I try to PM.

Jeremy

OK, I've got newer pictures that I took the other day (incidentally, the last time I weighed him he was 220 grams, long enpugh to look garter-snake-slender, and he's eaten 22 ounces of food since then (although he just shed today, so that'll shave a little weight back off.) I need to get the new pics loased into my computer, then into Photobucket, so it might not happen tonight, it already being 1:30 and all. Tommorrow afternoon, most likely. So meanwhile, don't be baffled that there's only three pretty much identical baby pictures of him in there.
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0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bull (Winkle)

These were all taken this week. You're right about him not being nearly four feet. he's defintitely over three, and when a rapidly growing snake in a four foot cage breaks three, I call that nearly ass long as the cage. Best estimate I can give is more like 39 inches, though. Still, that's a twenty inch increae since I got him! He doesn't get fat, he doesn't even poop very much, he just eats and eats and gets longer and longer. Including the shed right before I got him, yesterday was his fourth. I've seen that many sheds before, but never a colubrid growth rate like this. My pines were shorter than this at a YEAR, and they ate just as often as he does!

IMG]http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z38/JackAsp/december002.jpg[/IMG]

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0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bull (Winkle)

OK, there was a September shot here, but that whole post is gone. Check out the Bull/Pine/Gopher forum at Repticzone; the "before" pic is still in my thread there. Most people will sleep fine tonight if I don't worry about trying to repost, so, meanwhile... we got a little sidetracked from what I was trying to get opinions on.

Has anybody noticed anything different about bull growth from pine growth? For example, is it typical for them to grow faster but for a shorter duration, or to grow the same speed for the same time? Do they have more of a tendency to get weirdly long and skinny before they start to thicken?

Also, Winkle was short enough that, lengthwise, he could certainly have been as young as represented, but is 48 grams too heavy to be nine days old? Lengths of hatchlings are easier to look up than weights. The one person I've gotten much feedback from thinks he's older than he was represented as, which is certainly possible, as far as I know. Is there a growth speed difference between hatchlings and maintenance-fed slightly older snakes that are suddenly given more food?

Or even: do bulls seem to grow in different patterns? Not just overall rates, but different, for example, girth to length ratios, according to different temperatures or feeding regimens? Or is their lengthening perhaps based on food but the thickening more based on age, in which case I may be dangerously powerfeeding him? I know there's no absolute across the board rules, because genetics will vary, but if anybody's noticed any trends at all in this area, it might give me a better idea what to expect or even to change.

Hell, maybe I'm just obsessing over his proprtions because the last baby snake I raised was a fat little hognose and I've forgotten how gangly normal snakes usually look during their first year! Any and all hypotheses are welcome.

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0.1 2006 Western Hognose (Bebe)
0.1 age unknown Cane Toad (Hengo)
0.1 2005 White-Banded Sheen Skink (Minerva)
1.0 2006 Northern Diamondback (Queequeg)
1.0 2006 Madagascan Speckled (Sigmund)
1.0 2008 Bull (Winkle)