Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I reread your Reptile mag article here is some additional info (for what it is worth).
I have a large water tub with my greens. They bred in the water. She gave birth on the land. Both parents are dog tame but I trust the male more. The male was older about 9 years old. About 9.5 feet, quite a bit smaller than Juds. The female was about 6 years old and about the same size as your female back then.
The female is a rabbit eater. The male will eat rats but prefers pigeons or chickens.. He is not a big eater so it does'nt really matter.
To this date none of the babies have eaten( mice or rat pups) I may have to try chicks but I hate that and I can be really stubborn(so my wife says).
In the 90's I bred yellows 5 times. They also had a big water tub. Bred in the water gave birth in the water. Both parents were aggressive the male down right vicious. All their offspring bit at birth and I mean from day 1. I had a friend set on taming one. He worked with it nonstop and ended up with a pretty good snake. Although he did'nt trust it and would'nt allow hardly anyone else to touch it.
I get a kick out of seeing people free hand their yellows it is nice to see they can be so tame.
Danny Conner

you may very well need to move to chicks with your young. It is really not a big problem to switch them over to rats and we have never had one that wouldn't. About 90% of our young this year had fed on chicks by 6 weeks of age, and a few have started feeding on chick scented rats. From our experience, 99% of neonate greens will refuse rodents on initial feeding attempts. And field studies have shown that the diet of young greens during their first year is almost exclusively ground and water birds, switching over gradually to more mammalian prey species as they get larger.
As far as aggression in individual boids, I believe it is definitely genetically based and although it may not breed true 100% of the time, it is usually pretty close to that.

Kelly