Stunted growth in reptiles

I havent shared this little gal too much, but this is Smidge. Smidge is a Mexican variable king snake who was given to me a while back. She was lost a couple of times as a young snake for extended lengths of time, and those periods without food seem to have stunted her growth a bit. At this time she is over 12 years old and barely 30 inches long. She is however about as mellow a snake as I’ve ever had.
My question for all of you is, do you have a reptile who’s growth has been stunted? What caused it? Share your story.

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She is a beauty, whether she is small or not.
Do you have any examples of how big she should be?

She is currently my only thayeri aka variable king. But I’ve had individuals in the past and none of the adults were under 3ft. Certainly none over 3 years old.

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30" is actually not stunted for a thayeri. 24"-36" is normal for this species, anything larger than 3ft is big.

For a male I would tend to agree but I can’t recall ever having seen an adult mature female under 3 ft

My buddy has a few animals that stand out as small specimens of their species. He has a extremely small juvenile leopard gecko that still looks like a slightly larger hatchling he also has a rescue parrot who is stunted and it’s pretty obvious but they all do just fine. The parrots name is mini for obvious reasons

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All I keep are thayeri, or leonis now. Mine average around 36” or so. I think the largest I ever had was 43”. I’ve had a couple that were right at 30” and a little male that never passed 26”.

They are fairly small snakes. But I love them. Kept a lot of everything over the years but now they’re all I’ve got in my collection. Every color pattern you could ever want.

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