Question for my fellow Boa breeders

Boas Boa Constrictors
1

As I was getting feeders out to defrost it made me wonder what everyone else does when it comes feeding time, while you have animals paired up. I keep everything in the same room, so young Boas will continue being fed, and females not being bred will be as well, regardless of the season. This sometimes makes me pause since I have some really food driven animals and the simple act of getting feeders out of the freezer will draw their attention let alone coming in with a bucket of thawed rats.

So I was curious if any of you do anything different during breeding season than you do during the rest of the year. I do try to be careful not to draw too much attention from the pairs, but that isn’t always feasible. I’ve covered the enclosure fronts in the past, and I may do it again in the future but I like being able to do a quick glance check without intruding which that impacts.

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This was a really good question @randall_turner_jr and we took a few days over here to think about it. We stop feeding our breeders entirely during the breeding season 1 because we are worried about exactly that - an aggressively feeding female grabs a rat-smelling male) and 2. we also feel it complicates the internal workings of the mama boa anatomy and we feel that may have contributed to retained ova in the past.

But we do feed in the same room sometimes, but we do it as quickly as possible and clean up as quickly as possible after. (We usually clean cages right after feeding which allows the rat smell to dissipate throughout the day.)

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