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I would like to start a discussion about keeping and raising big boids such as Python reticulatus, Python molurus bivittatus, Python Sebae and Boa Constrictor. Yes al 4 of the species are very different but strange enough almost the same in taking care of.
now I don't want a discussion where people can't respect other opinions and start flaming or stuff like that. So keep it nice, and remember a Dutch proverb "there are many roads heading to Rome" meaning something like: there is more than one right way to keep snakes!
So why would I want this discussion? First of all sometimes some methods I read or hear piss me right off! The are so utterly wrong I get murder-like thoughts about those people giving this advice. Second of all there is already a big difference between the European and American way of keeping big boids. Foremost in housing and feeding.
Well the big difference in the housing of big boids is that the Americans stuff them in little(in comparison) cages. for fully grown females of 5M+ the have vision or herptek plastic cages of the largest size. Approximately 200x80x40/60cm (WxDxH) cages. it looks likes these two pictures I took from the internet.
I feel ashamed when I see this. those females have 2 options. lay at the cool side or lay at the warm side. never a chance to fully stretch or crawl around. so in my opinion this is way to small of a cage for this size of snakes. more appropriately housing is done by http://www.Filaretic.com. the house them like this picture below.
So this cage this size that is much better in my opinion. The snake has room to move about and well acting like a snake should be. So as you can see there is quite a bit of difference between the two housings. the American way is small and well you can fit more snakes on x m2 than if you do it like those Germans from filaretic. note that this are extremities. the are Americans who house their big snakes in big cages and Europeans one put them in small cages. but on average you can say that the Americans house them smaller then the Europeans.
A thing many people don't know about the big boids is that the have a huge lung. up to about 1/3 of their body length that lung can be. so by a boid of 3meters the lung can be about 1meter long. and if the can't stretch in their cage there is a chance of a build-up of old stale air and moisture in the very end of the lung. they can only take very deep breaths if the can stretch there body and lung. normally a bit old air or moist aren't dangerous to a snake. But if the can't completely in and exhale for a long time (like cramped up in a small cage) lung problems will originate their in the very end of the lung. and you can't almost never hear or see a cold in the end of a lung. when it finally visibly pops up in the snake for you to detect and treat the damage has been done already unfortunately.
So in my opinion you should keep your big boids housed in a properly sized cage. a little sum always helps me to take the proper size of a cage. I take the length of the average adult snake of that species and make sure my cage has about the same size as 1 depth and 1 width size added up with each other. so a snake of 3 meters I build a cage about 2 meters width and 1 meter depth. 2+1=3 again and that insures that a snake can stretch out over his/her fully length. an other little sum that people make is the diagonal length of the bottom. the diagonal length of the bottom should be about 2/3 of the snake his total length.
so a cage of 200x100cm bottom has a diagonal length of ((
)(200x200=40000)+(100x100=10000)= (50000√ )223,6) around 225cm that is more than 2/3 of the snakes body length of 300cm. this are not strict rules but more guidelines I find handy to determine the cage size.well above is no strict science of course. I'm not walking around with a calculator to decide the cage seize for a snake. sometimes and especially when raising them they get a bigger cage when I feel the need to do so. so mostly they start out in a cage with is in the beginning to big and at the end to small. but when they reach adulthood and the biggest grow is out of them, I take a good look how big the can get over the next 4 a 6 years and adjust the final cage to that. so ending up with pretty big cages for big snakes. as example, I planning the final cage for my Sebae Female around 4x1x1m so a 5meter big girl can easy crawl around in there. sure I can fit her in a 2.5x1x1m enclosure if I want to. But that is to small for my personal taste.
but this is my opinion on cage sizes of course. I'd like to know your opinion about this! and please elaborate why you choose to do so! I'm not to stubborn or to old to learn
brings us to feeding.
Way more than often snakes die to young because they where fed way to much. number 1 cause of early death by big boids is overweight and number 2 is respiration problems. or maybe it is the other way around. anyhow these to are close related to each other. Let me elaborate a bit about overweight problems and how they originate by big boids before we get to the feeding part. first of all the big boids grow fast the first 4 years of there life. after 4 years the growing still goes on but not as fast anymore. how hard they grow depends on how much food they get and at what temperatures they can bask. more food means faster grow and high temperatures mean faster digestion of their food.
well in the wild every young snake snatches every eatable organism in his area. every item of food they catch is cheating on death for them at that moment. if they don't eat they will die. if there is not enough food the will die. only the ones who master enough food and dodge enemies will survive to adulthood. so for them out there in the harsh nature is doesn't matter if the just had eaten the day/week before. the next meal can be ages away. so the need the great food-response they have. It is literally eat or be eaten out there.
but when kept in the safe surroundings of a cage there are not such worries for that young snake. there is no one who will hunt them down and eat them or a shortage of prey items(well that's the keeper his task). but for the snakes little mind there is no difference. he still acts on eat of be eaten. and yes we the keepers make great use of that. almost every young hatched/born snake will eat ferociously after their first shed, or even before their first shed. so they are born and fed a few times before the new owner picks his new snake up at the breeder. So you got your young small big boid and yes you want it to let grow to a big boid. so your gonna feed him every week or so a nice fitting prey. maybe even more than one prey at the time. week after week you stuff it with food and
your small boid starts to grow at high speed. but is this good? well to be honest no! hell no that is so so wrong to say it better. to explain why this is so wrong we take an other look at his family member in the wild again. for example take a Burmese python. when they are born in the wild and go off exploring the big world for food he will not find every week a prey. or even every two weeks. no he finds them at random intervals during time spent on earth. maybe he will eat twice in one week and than not for a month. then he snatches a prey again and 2 weeks later again. and then not for 3 weeks en well then came his lucky week and he found a nest of rats or something. and eats at one time about ten preys. and on and on and on... you get the picture right?
between those feeding moments the snake will digest and grow. it takes an average time of 4 days for the stomach to deteriorate the prey into a processable substance for the bowels. when the prey is in the stomach it only costs energy for the snake to deteriorate. getting his nutritions from the prey happens in the bowels. after about 4 days the stomach passes the deteriorated prey into the bowels. in the bowels the snakes extracts his nutritions/energy from the food. this can take about 2 to 8 weeks. depends on what kind of prey, the warmth of his body and the state of the bowels(resting or already active). all the excessive energy the snakes get from digesting is going to be stored in fat-cells. same as by humans.. if you eat more than you burn on a day then you will get more and more fat-cells in your body.
so the energy that is not used at the moment of digesting gets stored in his body in fat-cells. now the nardy part of this by snakes is that instead of humans they store their fat around the organs first not visible on the outside. by humans it get stored in the belly area, upper legs and arms areas as first. later on if you keep eating to much the fat moves closer and closer to the organs of humans. and by snakes it is the other way around. first the organs get surrounded by fat and after there is no more room there it expands to the outsides of the snake. so around the sides on the back and in the tail. so when you see a fat snake it has a longer lasting problem with excessive feeding.
So the snake is done digesting and took a cr@p to let the waste product out. or sometimes they save their cr@p at the end of the bowels and only defecate once every shedding. depends more on the snake than the species. as example I have boa's who will defecate nicely after 3 weeks of eating and I have boa's who only defecate 4 times a year (they save their sh!t
). off course is the amount of sh!t coming out those 2 different boa's is a different size. the one that defecates after 3 weeks eating lays a turd the size of a golden retriever (dog)or maybe smaller. and the one that defecates after 3 months or so leave a pile of sh!t that a lion would be jealous of I mean a big pile of sh!t obviously. after defecation and the indigestion system is fully empty (so no new prey somewhere down the line) the stomach and bowels go in to rest. if it is a large rest they will shrink. sometimes op to 1/10 of size while working. so the snake saves energy on that. well the everything is empty but the snake has stored his energy in fat-cells. now comes, what I think, one of the most marvellous happenings in the working of the inner snake. in the time of abstinence he will transfer those fat-cells into muscle and mass. this takes a lot of energy off course so they will do it the most work while de body has nothing to do than lay around waiting for the next prey. how hard this is.. well think for yourself.. how hard is it to train your beer-belly into a washboard belly?
so now you know how a boid forms food to fat-cells to muscle. and this is a important thing to know!! because here in lays the big secret to healthy big boids. lets go back to the first year of your new boid. when you feed them week in week out for a year you never gave the snake any chance to transfer fat to muscle. they need their time for that. yes surely your snake has grown an huge amount. but on the inside is more fat than muscle. because of the fast grow rate young boids have you won't see this on the outside. on the outside he looks like a healthy snake but on the inside fat is surrounding every organ. in the second year you keep up your feeding sequence and the snake keeps on growing and growing. on the outside still no problems but in the inside the situation gets worse and worse. after 3 years your animal will be in adulthood and sexually mature. and you start to breed them... if you gave way to much food big chance the won't breed. there is no room for eggs of follicles on the inside because of the fat. if you gave "normal" amount of food they will have smaller clutches because of the fat. and there are more problems on the inside... the liver doesn't work at full capacity because the fat is obstructing the blood vessels and the liver itself. same for the heart and kidneys. the lung can't fully expand anymore so shortage of breath is an issue maybe even worse! still on the outside they look like healthy snakes. and well at the end it is a miracle if the live until there tenth birthday
all this because the snake was constantly busy digesting food and didn't got a chance to transfer fat into muscle and mass. when they hit adulthood they will look like healthy nice looking not to fat but well fed snakes. and after 2 years into adulthood you start to think maybe I should feed a bit less, the get a bit to big. so after 5 years constant feeding and maybe an successfully attempt to breed them they finally get the time to go on a abstinence break and transfer fat to muscle and mass. way to late and they are already overweighted. and well it is way to easy to overfeed a snake and get him fat but it's almost impossible to let a snake lose weight by dieting or abstinence.
but why do people this? well one reason is.. if you let them grow fast there earlier ready to breed. it depends by boids more on weight than on size to breed. and well I can get any boa or big python a year of 2 years earlier to breeding weight than normally stands for the time of growing up. and well in the world of morphs it is always nice to breed as fast as possible. every year it takes longer the offspring sells for less money. and this can go down hard. 3 years ago an albino boa in Europa was around a 1000Euro average. now a days you can get them for 200 to 300Euro's. that is a very big difference ey. so if you had the possibility to breed them a year earlier you got more money for the offspring. so to say it blunt. it is being done pure for the money. and not for the snake his sake or health.
second reason is that people don't know any better. they heard what the breeder did to keep them and the copy it. not knowing that the breeder act's only on self-interest or doesn't know better also. or the listen to shop owners who see more income if a snake is being fed more. just purely trough stupidity and lacking motivation to learn more about their animal these mistakes happen. Don't get me wrong. I'm not accusing someone in particular. just an overall observation of mine.
don't you ask yourself why it's so hard to find a Burmese or Boa older then 10 years old. yes they are out there in our hobby. but rarely. most of them died long before their 10th birthday because of wrong feeding schedules. even snakes that not look obeisant got killed by FLD (fatty liver disease) or other fat related issues. and the worst of it all is... the amount of food given isn't in most cases to much.. but just to frequently.
Give me a young Sebae Boa or Retic and I will get it in a record time on to breeding weight and size. no problem at all. but I will guarantee he/she will not live longer than 10 years maximum. more around 6/7 years.
OK this above is about how not! to feed/raise any big boid in my humble opinion. I know for fact that an healthy boid is given lots of abstinence time while growing up and as an adult. but how do you give them this and still enough food. well again we take a look in nature. if we observe closely we will see that a boid will eat allot in an short period of time and goes in to rest for longer periods of time. once the caught a boa constrictor in the wild. they put a tracking device on the boa... kept it for 4 weeks in a cage without any food. so they're sure he had an empty stomach.the took his weight and length and the released it into the wild and tracked it. for 3 weeks he went back into hiding. then he went on the move. he looked for a hunting spot. found one settled himself and waited for food to come by. after a week he didn't catch anything and went again on the move for the next hunting spot. he stayed on that same spot for around 3 weeks. after those 3 weeks he went back to his hiding place. they caught him again and weight him. in those 3 weeks of hunting he ate about 50% of his own bodyweight in prey. they released him again and after 3 months of hiding he went on the hunt again.
they found a python Sebae in the wild who ate about his own weight in prey at once. the tagged him with a tracking device only to find out he went out hunting again about 11 months later!
so as you can see.. in the wild they will take lots of food at once and then go in to hiding for a long time. digesting and just converting fat to muscle. so in our little created nature-like world cages and their inhabitant's we should feed almost the same. my way is to give them allot of food in short period of time and keep them abstinent for longer periods. as example I take my Sebae.
in one month/two months I feed them about half there bodyweight in prey. so my Sebae male weights 4 kilo and in 1 month I feed him 2 kilo's (more or less) of food. after this month I wont feed him for about 3 to 4 months. then I do the same again. he should have gain some weight so I feed a bit more this time. and again I wont feed him after that for about 3 to 4 months. by the end of this time it is almost time to start the rain season/cooling period. i give him 1 big prey like a rabbit or chicken. wait about 3 weeks and start to turn down the heat about 10 degrees in 4 weeks time... then 4 weeks of cooling and then 4 weeks warming op again. and well then we start to do it all over again.
in their first year I begin with shorter abstinence periods and gradually build these up in 2 years... we begin with one month between feeding ( and at young age I feed them around there one bodyweight each time) and slowly build it up to longer pauses between feeding. when they are adults I feed them about 120% of their own bodyweight in a year. so if the Sebae weights about 20 kilo at the begin of the season I give him about 24 kilo of food in a year.
now let me here your opinion! yes I know, I wrote al long piece! but if you want to be clear you need to elaborate a bit
but what do you people think??
Regards
Sabje
PS. nice fact to know. A Boa constrictor eats about 30 to 50% of his weight at once. Reticulated python about 40 to 50% of his weight. a Burmese python eats about 40 to 60% of his weight and a Sebae python eats up to 100% of his own bodyweight at once.
) to build up more muscle mass. this results in a more slender squarish snake instead of a more round one. 
?? anyhow you are right.. tried to say the same only used the wrong words I think. 
), now here is my problem, what do you think is the correct feeding pattern for me to feed him. Currently I'm feeding him once a week, which evidently is unhealthy...