Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've read somewhere that I should remove the cave, but she
spends a lot of time curled up in the cave.

She basically spends the entire night and most of the day after
the light goes off curled up in her cave. The only time I've
caught her outside of it is to drink water.

She's still not due for a couple of months, should I wait or
remove it now? Also, she has only eaten once. I leave food but
she doesn't seem interested. When she did eat she seemed
famished. She was very herky jerky in her movements which
I've never seen in her before. Thanks for any tips.....tc

>>I've read somewhere that I should remove the cave, but she
>>spends a lot of time curled up in the cave.
>>
>>She basically spends the entire night and most of the day after
>>the light goes off curled up in her cave. The only time I've
>>caught her outside of it is to drink water.
>>
>>She's still not due for a couple of months, should I wait or
>>remove it now? Also, she has only eaten once. I leave food but
>>she doesn't seem interested. When she did eat she seemed
>>famished. She was very herky jerky in her movements which
>>I've never seen in her before. Thanks for any tips.....tc
>>

i personally dont use hides... but i think they reccomend removing them so you can keep a close eye on her... i think its really a matter of preference...

as for the feeding... she will eat when she is hungry... and the movements that were unusual was probably a little bit of stress showing

good luck

shiloh
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Shiloh Hawkesworth
kansas
(Midwest Serpents)

Hi..

I strongly recommend removing hide-boxes with pregnant Boa.. It's one of those things where if everything goes perfect then there's no problem (we've had perfect births in bags!) but I've seen baby boas get smashed or smothered in a hide-box. Why take the risk? take out the box and cover the front of the enclosure for privacy.

Of course if you use newsprint or some other featureless substrate Mom may have a hard time bracing her body to make the proper contractions to give birth without the box to grip on to.. that's one downside to that kind of cage-bottom.

This is the Catch-22 that is out there in so many of these questions! The entire set-up, feeding, temps, age (and any number of factors) figure in.. but people mostly deal with one issue at a time.

Better safe than sorry, take out the hide. That's my opinion on the subject.

Gus
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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