Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I just don't get it, when I pull up rainbow boa care sheets from big name companies, they almost invariably differ from what I and other actual breeders recommend. Seems like more often than not they recommend temps of 85 degrees or higher for a baby. I did see in at least one they did mention CRB's do require a higher temp than BRB's and it did seem that often the care sheet is for "Rainbow Boas" not BRB specific. Don't get me wrong, I'm not about to change what I do. I've produced in excess of 1100 BRB's myself, those along with ones I've bought add up to a staggering amount of experience in keeping babies alive and healthy. (I estimate in excess of 5000 baby/months) I've said it many times to people, they are NOT hard to keep alive, simply provide the RIGHT temps, good humidity, feed and clean up after them and they thrive.

Yet I still continue to see it over and over again where a baby is not doing well and it seems to tie back to temps over 80. Exactly what the big name care sheets are recommending.

What gives? I'm not a scientist, I have not researched their care beyond typical internet surfing. I've never even been to South America. Only two conclusions I can think of....

1) The writers are idiots and have not actually raised baby BRB's themselves. Probably in many cases just copying the info they find from other idiots.

2) The care sheets are cleverly written to get the buyer to fail and have to purchase a replacement animal to fill the now empty cage.

Sorry for the rant, feeling grumpy like Jeff!!
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count (02/01/2010):
42.61 BRB
27.40 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

When Dave starts getting as grouchy as me we have got problems. The funny thing is that just before coming here I had copied my caresheet and was coming here to post it. I was wondering about the same subject. Why are there so many bad caresheets out there? My own favorite theory is that they come from people who do not really know about these snakes but assume that care would be like that for Boa Constrictors and so they cut and paste a Rainbow Boa caresheet from info off their own or someone else's Boa Constrictor Caresheet. This kind of fits with what I hear fairly often from people around the herp community that they have had trouble keeping Rainbow Boas alive and healthy. I think they think they know about Rainbow Boas because they have experience with other boids and so they provide care for a Rainbow Boa like care for a Boa Constrictor. In their thinking and practice they overheat and dehydrate these snakes. The other thing that comes to mind is that there are many people selling Rainbow Boas at shows and on the internet and acting like they are breeders when in fact they are just people who buy and sell snakes. These people sometimes provide very bad care information. My baby BRB caresheet follows.

CARE OF NEWBORN BRAZILIAN RAINBOW BOAS

By Jeff Clark

Brazilian Rainbow Boas (BRBs) make great pets. They are very hardy and typically grow to around 6 feet in length. Many BRBs have been kept in captivity for over 20 years. Their size is much more manageable and practical than many of the other Boas and Pythons. They do require high humidity. This is especially important when they are small. If kept too dry they will dehydrate. Minor dehydration will cause feeding and shedding problems. Major dehydration will kill them. Baby BRBs should be maintained with close to 100% humidity in their cages. This can be accomplished by using damp substrate and limiting the ventilation. They do require some ventilation but in cages with large screen sides or screen tops the humidity will rapidly escape from the cage. Ideal substrate material for little BRBs is paper-towels or newspaper. The advantage of paper­ towels and newsprint is that it can be easily changed. Damp substrate will quickly grow mold. It should be changed often. BRBs drink more water and pass more liquid urine than most other snakes. Substrate that is kept in the cage too long will become contaminated with urates which are very acidic and this will harm the snake's skin. Many people use mulch and chipped bark substrates. Some of these substrates are excellent but you should be careful not to use one that is too acidic or one from a garden center that may have parasites in it. I especially like the cocoanut husk chunks and chips substrates for BRBs. It is vitally important to not use cedar substrate. The oils in cedar and similar woods are toxic to snakes. Pine shavings and aspen shavings are also not suitable for BRBs. Did I mention that you should change the substrate often? BRBs require cages with a cool end in the low 70s and the warm end in the high 70s to very low 80s. If you keep them in cages that are too small to maintain a temperature gradient in the cage they should be kept with the entire cage in the mid 70s. Temperatures higher than 85 can quickly cause dehydration and death. Most reptile heating products are too hot for Rainbow Boas. These snakes are nocturnal and secretive. Using overhead lights to heat their cages will create too much stress for a BRB. Cage temperatures must be controlled with a proportional thermostat or a carefully set and monitored rheostat. Don't guess

what the temperature is down in the cage where the snake spends most of it's time. Invest in good temperature measuring equipment and use it often to make sure you do not overheat your BRB. BRB temperature requirements are' 10 to 15 degrees cooler than what is required for many other boids including Ball Pythons, Boa Constrictors and Burmese and Reticulated Pythons. People who try to keep BRBs hot like they keep their other boids often kill them. Extra care should be taken when transporting BRBs. If left in a closed car in the sun the temperature will rapidly rise and kill them. BRBs should be provided with caging with hiding spots so that they can avoid light and activity. Small plastic containers like margarine is packaged in with a small entry hole cut into the side of the container work well. Place substrate material such as damp moss or damp papertowels in the hiding container. BRBs need a waterbowl in their cage that is large enough for them to submerge. They will often soak in the water for several days before shedding. However, when they do not have a good hiding spot they may have to use the waterbowl for a hidin!! soot and spend too much time in the water. Adult BRBs can be set

up in elaborate naturalistic caging. They look especially nice in large cages with exotic plants. However they will spend much of the daylight hours hiding in or under the plants. It is best with a new little BRB to keep the caging simple to make sure the snake is doing okay before adding too many variables that may cause problems. After the snake is acclimated and doing well you can make small changes in the caging and try different substrates and plants making one change at a time. Little BRBs should be fed small live mice at first. Many will also take live pinky rats for their first meals. They will feed much more readily on a live meal than a dead meal. They also like mice that are large enough to run around much more than they like pinky or small fuzzy mice. I have actually fed full-grown adult mice to BRBs for their fIrst meal. They can handle very large prey but are more likely to regurgitate if fed extremely large meals When they have become accustomed to eating live prey they will easily switch to eating fresh killed and then frozen and thawed prey. Thawed prey will work best if it is heated to around 105 degrees for the first feeding attempts with it. BRBs are always more likely to eat undisturbed in the dark than when being closely watched in bright daylight. Do not force-feed a BRB. Force feeding is very stressful and stress is often the reason that one will not eat. These snakes are eating machines. If your BRB does not eat it is because of stress or improper husbandry. Eliminate the stress and correct the husbandry and they will eat readily. The most common husbandry problems are keeping the snake too hot or too dry or subjecting it to too much light or activity. Little BRBs have a very simple outlook on other living things. Anything it sees moving is either a predator or prey. When first born they will often strike and bite. The bite of a little BRB is not painful and usually does not bleed. If you handle the snake for several minutes everyday it will quickly become tame. If it bites or strikes it is because it is afraid of you or it thinks it can eat you. Just let it bite and hold on and chew if it wants. By doing this it will learn that you are too big to eat and that you are not harming it and that striking and biting will not make you go away. If you do retreat when it strikes you will reinforce the striking and biting behavior. Little BRBs can be handled for as much as an hour per day. Too much handling can cause stress and stress may cause them to not feed. It is okay to have them out of their cages in humidity much lower than 100% for short handling periods.

If you have any problems with your BRB email me at jc1arksnakes@comcast.net

Visit the Rainbow Boa forum on kingsnake.com to get answers to any questions you may have about Rainbow Boas.

Hey Dave, you're absolutely correct. There are a ton of lousy BRB care sheets out there. I'd rather attribute it to ignorance than people trying to be malignant. I think a few people used other boa care sheets and pasted Brazilian Rainbow Boa to the top. Then others came along and simply copied the junk that was out there.

Brazilian Rainbow Boas are extremely simple and straightforward to care for. Dave and Jeff have a wealth of experience and knowledge with these wonderful snakes. If more people knew how easy these amazing snakes are to care for, their popularity would skyrocket.

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Paul D

www.MoonlightBoas.com

Totally agree with you both.
I feel like 90% of the snakes i have sold, ive spent half the time trying to re educate the buyer on how to actually look after the animals. Ive always given the link to your caresheet dave, as i have felt it was the most accurate. I used to use your aswell Jeff, although it seems like your original website fell of the face of the internet??

The problem is, that how are any newbies supposed to know which website has the correct information, and which doesnt. For example if you type in Rainbow Boa Caresheet into google, yours doesnt even make the first page dave. And by the time they have got to it, they will have killed their new snake!!

We were all new once though, and im suprised my first brb Bob, actually made it thru those first few months.

That is one thing, that i love about this hobby. You learn a new thing everyday. Yesterday i learnt, dont leave a rodent freezer door open, and not go into the snake room for 36hrs....................... arrrghhhhh......

cheers
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Dave

15.24 brbs
4.8 crbs
Im an aussie in an arctic environment
Helsinki, Finland

Dave B.,
....You make some very good points. For many years if you googled Rainbow Boa my website was the first one that came up. My website was not commercial but google was different then and went to the most visited site first rather than to all the ones that pay google for getting them hits. Google used to be great now it totally sucks. And yes, my website did just fall off the face of the earth. The solution to the problem of so many websites with bad caresheets is for us to go to work and spend the time emailing all those people and telling them their caresheet is wrong and then helping them to correct it. It will probably take someone with more tact than I have. Alternatively we could pay google their ransom so that Dave's great caresheet would come up first when people google Rainbow Boa or Rainbow Boa Caresheet.
Jeff

Hey Jeff, my Brazilian Rainbow Boa Care Sheet has been coming up #2 on Google when you type in Brazilian Rainbow Boa Care, and it's usually on the first page with other search phrases. I also wrote a list of Brazilian Rainbow Boa FAQs.

If anyone has recommendations on how I could improve my care sheets, I'd welcome any input. I'll do my best to keep them searchable so hopefully people come across them before they read the wrong information.

In addition, here is a Beginner's Guide To BRBs
Beginner's Guide To Brazilian Rainbow Boas

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Paul D

www.MoonlightBoas.com

Paul,
...Adding the word "care" to a "Brazilian Rainbow Boa" search using google does eliminate many of those websites that have incorrect information. It did bring yours up second on the google list for me. I will try to be more specific in all my google searches in the future and see if perhaps I can regain my lost respect for google. Your caresheet is EXCELLENT! It is concise and to the point. In our busy world where people do not take the time to read anything that is long that is very important. In your FAQs and Beginners guides I like everything....except that we disagree a little about feeding live. I know that conventional wisdom says that rodents can injure snakes and adult rodents certainly can and do injure snakes but in thousands of feeding of hoppers and weanlings and even small adults live to snakes I have not had a snake injured. Perhaps your more careful stand on this is good to prevent injuries but there may be some snakes that are stubbornly refusing dead prey that can safely be fed live hoppers, weanlings and small adults. One change that might make your info on the caresheet and FAQs and Beginners Guide even better would be to encourage people to come here for help when they have a problem with their Rainbow Boa. More and more recently I have people ask questions about my ads that tell me they have done no research on Rainbow Boas before they start shopping. Initially I was dumbfounded to see this but it happens so often now that I have come to accept it but I do encourage people to use the forum and learn before buying.
Jeff

"Your caresheet is EXCELLENT!"

That means a lot coming from you Jeff. I put a great deal of time and effort into writing those care sheets to the best of my ability.

"I like everything....except that we disagree a little about feeding live."

I actually agree with you about feeding live, but chose to write about feeding live rodents on the conservative side. The last thing I want is for an inexperienced snake keeper to skim my BRB Care Sheet and allow their boa to be injured accidentally. I'm planning on writing an article that goes more in depth about feeding that will cover when it's appropriate to feed live, and how to do it safely.

If anybody can think of Brazilian Rainbow Boa topics that they would like to see written about in greater depth, please let me know.

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Paul D

www.MoonlightBoas.com

I just wrote a very irritated review of "The Art of Keeping Snakes" on a different forum for this very reason! That author, who has published numerous care books on snakes, actually states specifically that BRB's need "ground temp" of 80 degrees with a hot spot of 90-95 degrees! Really?! I'm so grateful that I had you guys to give me good info when I was starting out. There was other bad husbandry advice in that book for other species, but that stood out as the most likely to be fatal.

Garnet's hanging out on my forearm right now, giving me the stinkeye because my typing jostled her.
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~Cynthia

"And in the spring, I shed my skin and it blows away with the changing wind..."

Great post, I think it just comes down to laziness. Coincidentally, someone on another forum was complaining about the same thing. Now I haven't read the book, so I haven't confirmed it, but since I doubt the person was lying or mistaken, I'll name the book. The name of the book is "The Art of Keeping Snakes", and while I have no reason to believe any other information in the book was bad, regarding BRB's it said that "Brazilian rainbow boas need a hot spot of 90-95 degrees." So how many BRB's are going to be cooked because of this book????

If you saw it on iHerp, it was me. I mentioned it in my post above too. The other bad advice was the frequency of feeding for garter and ribbon snakes. I'm mostly amazed because it seems like so much research was put into the book in regard to bioactive substrates and creating miniature ecosystems, and yet some of the basics are wrong! Considering that I don't have a ton of experience as a keeper and yet even *I'm* able to find errors like that is kind of scary.
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~Cynthia

"And in the spring, I shed my skin and it blows away with the changing wind..."

As another thought, has anyone ever tried to contact the author and correct that information? Seems like someone on one of these forums might even know him.
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~Cynthia

"And in the spring, I shed my skin and it blows away with the changing wind..."

I talked to the owner of one of those caresheets that comes up near the top in a google search and they are going to make changes. They actually keep and have bred Colombian Rainbows which do tolerate higher temperatures.