Honestly, all of this blew up after I was on yesterday morning so I only discovered it today when I logged in LOL
I can put the information I have out there. I can point people in a direction to help them become better informed. Yes, I can even try and appeal to authority (mine and others.) At the end of the day though, that is all I can do. People may listen to me, people may not. But cognitive dissonance is a real thing, and some people find it very hard to redirect themselves when confronted with a view point different than the one they have held (given how the current state of the US is becoming more and more entangled to both my personal and professional lives, I am struggling with this problem daily)
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I’ve been studying these animals for about a decade.
Yes they’re equipped to take large meals regularly if their environment allows, unlike Boas which will only survive a few years under similar circumstances.
Yes they can easily survive on a couple large meals a year, but no that’s not “typical”. Most will have several small meals.
Most wild retics/burms will never attain a large size, period, regardless of age, this has already been established…
There are many big Burms/Retics around the 20 year mark, they’re not all dying pre-maturely like Boas were in the 90’s with weekly feedings.
Medusa, the biggest retic ever is well over 400lbs, about 18 years old and still going strong.
Nobody ever said you were wrong about them being adapted for fasting…
Ok, I didn’t want to do this but I’ll have to.
You say you’ve been studying this species for over a decade. That’s well and good but if you know so much about them why did you PM me personally asking about their husbandry needs and care? About feed schedule and growth rates? About what I think their enclosure should be like and how they act?
It’s all well and fine to defend yourself, that’s human nature. But if you knew so much about them why seek out obvious answers?
I think you’re a good kid, but your information you’ve learned on this species is misinformed.
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Because I understand that there are many different ways of raising the species, and there is a lack of information about SuperDwarves in general, not much more that a single YouTube channel specializing on them and a few scattered videos here and there.
It’s interesting to ask people what works for them, because I could ask 3 experienced Retic keepers and get three completely different answers.
Subjects as simple as enclosure size, feeding schedules and temps are often quite divisive amongst experienced keepers.
Along the lines of this discussion, I wonder about the rule of thumb stating one should feed prey about the size of the largest body section. My sand boa is fat, he is a subadult male and I feed him small mouse pinkies about every 7 days with the occasional skipped week, if I fed him prey near his girth, he would be too fat to move. My carpet python won’t eat prey unless it is about 25% smaller then her body, she will take bigger prey but never eats it. My younger ball pythons are frightened of bigger prey items, mostly FT, but some live as well. Therefor, I’m wondering if the generazation to feed prey about the size of the snake’s girth is wrong.
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I sometimes hear that it is the girth of the snake or smaller. Never larger prey items than the largest part of the snake more of. That said, sand boas need food around once every 14-16 days once they are subadult size. Try for 2 feedings each month for him and he should lose weight.
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In general, girth sized meals are good for younger snakes, but regular girth sized meals for older adults will result in a very heavy animal.
That rules goes out the window very fast and is only used with very young hatchlings when it comes to BP and Carpets.
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Girth or smaller makes sense. Thanks for the information about feeding Sand Boas. He is already eating very small pinkies, maybe biweekly feedings will render him down. LOL I sometimes wonder if a sand boa even needs to eat. (exaggerating, I’m not going to starve my sand boa) My guy is chunky but he is soft when picked up.
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Their genetics and physiology would argue otherwise…
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I am familiar with Medusa. I said “alive and healthy”. She qualifies for the first but certainly not the second as she is very clearly obese, a fact that is plainly visible if you look at her.
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@xamier My sand boa boy is a subadult and he gets fed a frozen pinky rat every 7 days. Haven’t noticed him putting on the pounds either. Our older male that we had at one time was also on a single pinky rat but he was always finicky and went a month or more without eating. Again though we never noticed him being to fat. Then again Sands tend to be sausages naturally.
Here’s a Pic I just took for reference. He just at 2 days ago. To me he doesn’t look overweight.
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Sand boas are not built for being fed that often, and need to be fed at most every 14 (just twice a month, and honestly once a month would be just as good) days once they are no longer hatchling size. To me he does look overweight since I can’t see his spine at all, and the sand boas you are used to seeing are also mostly overweight since they are fed on a similar cycle in most cases. Here is a link to one that is a lot healthier in weight.
https://www.morphmarket.com/us/c/reptiles/boas/sand-boas/293701
Notice that even with a top down picture, you can still see the spine. Boas digest a lot slower than many other snakes, and feeding a sand boa (they go a very long time without food in the wild) every 7 days at that size is not good for it. Especially since rat pinks are just sacks of fat. The best way to see a sand boa of a healthy weight is to just look at young babies. The way they hatch is how they should look.
Edit: the wrong link kept pasting, fixed it.
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@ashleyraeanne Yeah talked to a breeder friend and she confirmed he was a heckin’ chonker. So we are gonna scale back to once every 2 weeks like a lot of our older snakes are on. Honestly it gained so gradual over the two years we’ve had him it wasn’t something I really noticed?
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My sand boa did the same thing, I dug him out one day and he was fatter then I had realized. It didn’t help that he will eat like a boa.
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Would it be better for me to feed a small mouse? I have been feeding pinkies because they are small.
@xamier If your boa isn’t picky and you have other snakes feed him what is an appropriate size with what you have already. I have 15 snakes and only a handful of sand boas so I tend to buy in bulk what’s appropriate for as many as I can in one go. That way I’m not having 5 different kinds of frozen rodents in my freezer that I gotta pick through.
Though I gotta wonder if my Sands will get big enough to eventually take something besides pinky rats. Can they eventually take the next size up? Cause that would be optimal.
Maybe the females will get big enough. I think I will try a small mouse. I only have one sand boa but I have 4 hognosed snakes, 2 king snakes, 2 milk snakes, 2 rat snakes, 2 short tailed pythons, a carpet python, a dwarf retic and 18 ball pythons plus 3 lizard that occasionally eat pinkies. I have all kinds of frozen and live feeders available. Maybe the mouse will be lower fat then a pinkie.
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@xamier Most of mine are either on pinky rats or larger… And eventually all of them will outgrow pinky rats. I guess when that time comes I can get mice for my Sands. Especially for the girls when in the distant future they are breeding size.
Personally I feed all of my snakes that will never get big enough to need to take a rat, mice since they get better nutrition that way. It is also a lot cheaper for mice than rats so it saves money and lets me get more for a lot less. It does help that the state I live in is home to ARS.
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