A shipment of legal boas from Venezuela was imported in August of this year, I ended up with quite a pile of them.
The condition of these animals was poor and their appearance did not meet the expectations of people wanting to see nice redtails. I was also warned by someone in the know that the babies in the lot were probably of mixed heritage, as the breeding facility made no effort to keep animals from different locations within Venezuela separate. This would not be a great problem in Guyana or Suriname but in Venezuela the boas range from very nice looking true redtails to BCI and everywhere in between.
I did get to go through the shipment as it came out of the boxes and picked out several larger animals and a few babies that I hoped would make for future breeding pairs with similar looks. It was pretty rough going, my understanding is that the 'farmer' force-feeds the animals with a grease-gun of some sort, a mixture of canned pet food and who knows what, but the TLC is starting to pay off.
This one is clean enough now to share a photo, as you can see it has attributes of the BCC and BCI, when I get a good clean shed I will do a scale count.
Interesting boas!
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Gus
A. Rentfro
RioBravoReptiles.com
www.riobravoreptiles.com
"Quality is not an accident. Perfectly healthy animals are a minimum requirement.. everything else is just salesmanship" gus
