Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am curious. I have two Burms that are about 5.5' long. They are male and female. Well, they both shed in the past five days and now they seem to be showing mating behaviors. I thought Burms did not show this behavior until at least 7-8'. Is this just flirting or could a pair actually hook up at this size and produce?
BTW both are light phased high contrast and are gorgious animals. I will try to post a pic tomorrow.

Would probably be best to house them seperately. Although they aren't typical breeding size, males about 8 ft. and females about 11-12 ft, the males may sometimes get a little spunky before reaching size. He may indeed even pass sperm plugs. A female that size isn't ready yet though. If she did become gravid at this size, most likely the eggs would be slugs. Mind you, all this is just what I've picked up in here and elsewhere online, not from experience. I only own one Burm.

Quig

I agree that they are not of size to breed. But my bigger concern is that they are housed together. Snakes should be housed seperately except for the purpose of breeding. There are some serious issues that can reslt from housing snakes together, that I will not get into right now but if you request I will. Seriously consider getting another enclosure for one of your snakes. Todd

Todd im actually curious to hear why they shouldnt i posted the question if it was ok to keep them together but no1 answerd i keep my male and female together i feed them both seperate and out of the tank and they have ample room to be apart from one another howevery they are still young and only 3 feet each i would like ur imput since it may be an issue when they are older and bigger
Thanks
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2 Burmese python
1 savu python
1 blood python
2 Uromastyx mali, Nigerian
2 savannah monitors
some other gems i will leave out..

I figured I would have to answer this..lol. There are many reasons why large reptiles should be housed seperately(even when they are small). Firstly the transmission of disease is much more likely if they are housed together. If they are housed seperately the possibility of transferring either parasites or disease/illness is reduced greatly because the animals do not come into direct contact with each other. Secondly, if you plan on breeding them then you will get a much stronger response from the pair if they are not housed together. I am not saying that snakes that live together will not breed it is just more likely to happen if they are housed seperately. And the last reason I am going to talk about is in my opinion the most important reason. Large boids should ALWAYS be fed within there own enclosure. This is something I have preached for several years on this forum. It is best to practice the same methods, whether it is in regards to handling or feeding or whatnot, from the time the snake is a baby all the way throughout its life. This will help you and your snakes develope a pattern. I am not sure if snakes can LEARN,but they can be conditioned. This I know from personal experience. If you develope a pattern with your snakes you will have a much more pleasurable time with them. Here is why you should not feed outside of the enclosure. It is easy to do it when they are young, but what are you going to do once the snakes have reached larger sizes. You should have noticed that when you remove your snakes and feed them outside of their enclosure, that they may stay in feeding mode even after they have finished eating. I have opbserved this with burms for well over an hour afterwards. Now, when they are in feeding mode, they are apt to strike and respond to anything that the may consider food. If the first thing they see is your hand,arm, or leg then it is not out of the question for this to develope into a serious situation that can easily turn dangerous if not deadly. Also handling a snake after it has consumed a meal can lead to regurgitation and can stress the animal unnecassarily. Also, there is a very real possibility of once you return the snakes back to their enclosure that they smell a prey item on there cage mate and mistakenly try and constrict it. I have witnessed this first hand, for I too used to believe it was better to house them seperately. However having to seperately a pair of 7'ers I quickly and permenantly changed my stand on this practice. In general it is unsafe for both the snake and the keeper to feed outside of the enclosure and in direct corelation it is best to house snakes seperately. I hope my rambling made some sense to you and I hope you will take my advice into serious consideration. Todd

Sorry there is a major typo. Towards the bottom of my post i said that I too used to house my snakes seperately. That should read that I also used to house snakes together and feed outside of the enclosure. Sorry for that. Todd

Your burms are only 3ft right now. Your female has the potential to be 5 ft in just 2-3 months. Do you still plan on housing them together?
You must have a huge enclosure to handle the rapid growth of two burms. And I, along with plenty other here in this forum are not proponents of feeding outside the enclosure.
Burms stay in a feeding mode far too long to be safe to feed that way. After a rat or two, and still fired up. Your hands, and you yourself begin to appear as food. You may get away with this with your 3ft burms, but by time they reach 6 ft, this becomes dangerous. How do you move them back to their enclosure?
How do you keep them from seeing each other as food?
Not a good choice caging them together, nor is feeding out of the enclosure.In a very short time, doing either one...housing together, and feeding out of the enclosure, becomes a dangerous proposition.

Well put on all of the various reasons why not to house them together, but we disagree on one point. You are very right that these large constrictors (and all other animals) can respond to conditioning. That is the very reason I always feed outside of the enclosure, but in a separate feeding enclosure. This feeding enclosure is the only place that the snakes are offered any type of food. With this method the cue for the snake to strike and eat is not the opening of its enclosure door, or seeing a hook or my hand entering its living quarters. The cue for feeding is the environment of the designated feeding container and the entry of a prey item. This method may increase the amount of time it takes for feeding, but has allowed (for me and the snakes I have worked with, at least) for regular handling and trouble free feeding. I should note that I do allow time (a few hours) after feeding for the food to settle before attempting to put the snake back in its enclosure.

I, in no way am trying to imply that this is the best method, it is only what has worked for me, and it is very possible that I have wasted many hours in feeding this way. We all develop our own husbandry methods over the years to suit our individual needs.

-Wusstig

I agree that by using a seperate enlclosure is the best way to practice out of enclosure feeding, however, I still prefer and will always recommend feeding in the enclosure. I have noticed that as long as you interact with your snakes regularly that they will not associate the opening of the door with food. Especially if you develope a routine. Here are two examples I use:
Whenever I am doing anything besides feeding, I always use a hook to let the snake know I am there. I scratch the side of the snakes body with the hook prior to dragging it out. When i feed I do not put a hook in its cage so it soon associates the hook with me and not food.
My second method is the best method I have found for safe conditioning of the snake. I got the idea from researching various venomous techniques. I found out that many hot keepers use feed doors. Well, since the majority of large caes have two doors, I use the left door for everything except feeding. If the snake needs to come out, if I need to change the water or whatnot, all happens through the left door. The right door is the feed door and is only opened to toss in a f/t,f/k prey item. I have been utilizing these techniues for over two years with out a single incident so I strongly stand by them as sound. Hope this makes a little sense and could possibly give you options when it comes to feeding for you.

They are housed seperatly but we have an area set up to exercise them and had them out "playing" when the male was trying to coax the female to breed w/ him.