Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hey everyone, after doing much research i finally decided that a male burm was for me, i went to a local breeder brad mcarthy, (great guy by the way) and picked up arnie, he's roughly 4 feet so i would assume he's around 6 months of age? brad had said he got it as a trade and didn't know much about it, but anyways here are my questions

it will accept f/t rats (yay!) but it doesnt want to strike at them,is that normal? I find if i leave them in the cage overnight it's always gone in the morning, should i be worried about this at all??

second question, i am by no means crafty but i know that building a cage is the way to go instead of buying something prebuilt, so here is my question, is anyone in the pittsburgh pa area that would be willing to work with me on building something for arnie? i was thinking of 9-10 feet long 3 feet deep and roughly 2- 2.5 feet high i want to give him as much space as i can, please respond to the post or email me at crochuntermyhero@hotmail.com

and pay no mind to the screen name if you're against the crochunter, this is a very old name thanks in advance

James

It is pretty common for snakes that have been brought up of F/T to just calmly eat the prey. They won't strike and coil it. They will just crawl up to it and locate the head and then start to consume it. Not all are like this. Some will do everything like a "normal" kill, but some don't and it is nothing to worry about.
I would love to help you build the cage but unfortunately I am in Northern Tennesse, but if you need help with the plans just let me know. For convenience reasons I would highly recommend that you limit the length of the cage to 8'. That is the length that plywood comes in and it would simplify the plans a lot. anyway, let me know if I can be of any more assistance, Todd

Hi James –

Congratulations on your new Burmese. One of the snakes I’ve had the longest now is a nasty old male Burmese I bought at a pet shop in 1979. I'm hoping yours has a better temperament than mine. I’m not crafty either, but I just wanted to caution you to consider your dimensions carefully. If you were to go with that 2.5 foot height and 3 foot depth, the cage wouldn’t fit through most standard interior doors.

-Joan

Joan,
thanks for the tip i didn't even consider the door issue, I will be moving soon and plan on building his cage into the attic of the new house, so i probably best wait and see what the attic looks like, and yes he has a great temperment i've yet to have any aggresion problems, thanks for the insight greatly appreciated

James
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1.0 savannah monitor "cringer"
0.1 coastal carpet python "lola"
0.1 dumeril's boa "porter"
1.0 burmese python "arnie"