Keep him cool and seperate from the females. Offer him live pinky mice if you can get them. I would put the pinkies in a dish out of the aspen and let them find them. I am not sure why, but over the years I have had a few that would not eat in the aspen. My current male, a wild caught will only eat pinkies and will never eat fuzzies. he will eat six or eight at each sitting too.

Keep in mind that seeing the animals copulate and marking the date of copulation has very little of no bearing on when they may drop babies. If you happen to see her ovulate then you can be somewhat accurate if you keep track of date and temperature.

Complete gestation in live bearing animals is not very differnent from egg laying animals. You just have to add the time of egg development to the equation. I have some notes somewhere that I have compared from ovulation in corn snakes to ovulation in sand boas with showed me that it was about 90 day depending on temps. Corn eggs hatch in about sixty at 83 degrees, add any where from 20 to 30 days(depending on basking temps)for egg development and you'll find they are very similar. You just get to see one of the steps sooner in egg layers.



only gravid females need the warm basking area. In a large enough set up you can offer it to both, but I have had males which loved the hot spot and did not do well. When I cooled them down and did not offer the basking temps, they started eating again and gaining weight. The cool side of there tank was low 70's with an 83 degree basking temp.

I will add however that when ever I have had a boa where the scales are seperating with stretching I have recieved babies. I also know with mine that it is not food causing the rapid frowth.
-----
Steve Perry

North Idaho.

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]