Feeding my Purple Albino SD/D Retic (Video)

[cchardwick]

Brand new video footage taken just a half hour ago - ENJOY!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj2T...ature=youtu.be

Here I am feeding my big super dwarf retic male a fresh killed rat. I fed this guy a week ago so he is not feeding that aggressively in this video, sometimes he really gets after it! I usually feed him every other week.

For all you retic fans out there this is a male Purple Albino 37.5% Super Dwarf, 50% Jampea Dwarf, 12.5% Mainland reticulated python about two and a half years old. This is his first breeding season, not sure if the female is going to go this year... The female is a lot more mellow, she won't coil up around the rat like this boy!

I find that feeding in a slide out tub from above is much easier than feeding with any other type of enclosure. This is an ARS boa rack level with ARS-8018 levels below and ARS-7030 levels above. This is the old style boa rack, the new one won't fit in this stack, it's a bit smaller and stacks in with the ARS-5040 levels (I have both types).

Also notice how clean the substrate is, this is Prococo coconut husk and it's a month old and ready to be changed out. At this point it still looks clean and smells just a little bit 'sour' but it keeps the maintenance to basically zero, I just clean up the big stuff about once a month or so! I also spray it down with water once a day and if it really dries out I sprinkle a gallon of water over it to keep it moist underneath, but it usually always stays dry on top.

Hope you enjoy the video!!

[Lirenn]

Amazing! It's interesting to watch him spiral around the rat.

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk

[C.Marie]

Gorgeous noodle great video thank you ever so much for share

[Gio]

Nice video.

Very pretty snake as well.

[Sauzo]

That is one laid back retic during feeding. If that was Caesar, the minute that tub was slid open, you would have had a face full of teeth. When Caesar smells food, it's flat out dangerous. When i feed him, i have to just slide a door open and shove the rat or guinea pig in there with tongs. One of these days, i should make a video of Caesar eating. I bet it would turn some people off to retics haha. He hits his stuff so hard, he shakes the glass doors on the whole stack. Like i said, feeding him is NOT fun. Kris Brown at Vital Exotics was right when he told me, Caesar will eat anything, anytime.....i bet he was losing money with that snake while trying to sell it haha.

Nice retic though. And you need to meet my snakes and then say a tub would be easier to feed in haha. Heck, today Vicky took a shot at me after eating her large rat. I was walking by to grab a rat for Rosey and i hear a loud thud on the cage glass and look back to see Vic with huge pupils, tight 'S' curl standing up shaking back and forth lol. My boas dont play when it's dinner time. Even Gina who is usually mellow scared me by shooting out and grabbing her mouse before i even got it in the cage.

[cchardwick]

The only time my retics go bonkers for food is when I'm underfeeding them. I produce more jumbo rats that I can use so I always have extra in my rack and can easily feed them more frequently. I'm getting to the point where I raise up male rats to breed and let them breed just one tub of females and then feed them off, it keeps them young and productive. My retics will jump out of the tub and snap at me if I under feed them, it's pretty exciting! But just give them a jumbo rat every five days and within a week or two they get really mellow.

I'm at the point where I let the snake let me know when he is hungry, if they start pacing the cage and give me that aggressive feeding response when I open the tub to spray it down I'll feed more frequently. In this case this snake was always moving towards the end of the sprayer all week long like it was a 'mild' feeding response every time I opened up the tub. Then when I was feeding all the other snakes this weekend he was looking out of the window and pacing back and forth so I gave him a rat a week early. My female is so mellow now she won't even grab and wrap a rat, I have to lay it in the tub and close it up and let her think about it for a few minutes LOL.

[Sauzo]

Well Caesar gets fed every 7-10 days with a jumbo rat or XL guinea pig. If that's considered underfeeding, then i would hate to know what overfeeding is....every 2 days? Lol. And to underfeed a snake would take some serious effort considering in the wild, they can go for 3-6 months in between meals and they actually have to expend energy to look for said meal and catch it. In captivity, they sit there like bumps on logs getting spoon fed. The only reason Caesar gets fed every 7-10 days is because otherwise, i will be taking him to the vet for hamburger face. I personally would like to feed him every 2-3 weeks but no way he is having that.

Just for the love of god, dont overfeed your retics to the point they look like that burm from Prehistoric Pets that was labeled as "BIG' but in reality should have been labeled "grossly obese". And this extra applies if you are breeding. Lean snakes actually breed better and produce better than fat obese ones or ones that are power fed and grown vs the nice slow grown snakes.

I bet if that female you got was stretched out to longer feeding schedule, she would slam that thing like a freight train. I noticed when i fed my snakes a lot more generously, they got kind of lazy and would just grab the food as if to say "ok, if i got to eat this, i guess i will' vs when i stretched their feeding out, they would go bonkers for food. Rosey and Vicky get fed once a month and you know when its dinner time as they start patrolling around. Same with the little ones as well as all the snakes. You know when feeding day is coming as they are all out and about and looking around.

And try live plants. I used them in Pat's set up and they worked awesome. So i decided to try it in the boa cages and now i dont even have to mist at all in winter using aspen even. The humidity stays around 80% and it isnt a wet sloppy mess from constantly misting.

[Zincubus]

Brand new video footage taken just a half hour ago - ENJOY!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj2T...ature=youtu.be

Here I am feeding my big super dwarf retic male a fresh killed rat. I fed this guy a week ago so he is not feeding that aggressively in this video, sometimes he really gets after it! I usually feed him every other week.

For all you retic fans out there this is a male Purple Albino 37.5% Super Dwarf, 50% Jampea Dwarf, 12.5% Mainland reticulated python about two and a half years old. This is his first breeding season, not sure if the female is going to go this year... The female is a lot more mellow, she won't coil up around the rat like this boy!

I find that feeding in a slide out tub from above is much easier than feeding with any other type of enclosure. This is an ARS boa rack level with ARS-8018 levels below and ARS-7030 levels above. This is the old style boa rack, the new one won't fit in this stack, it's a bit smaller and stacks in with the ARS-5040 levels (I have both types).

Also notice how clean the substrate is, this is Prococo coconut husk and it's a month old and ready to be changed out. At this point it still looks clean and smells just a little bit 'sour' but it keeps the maintenance to basically zero, I just clean up the big stuff about once a month or so! I also spray it down with water once a day and if it really dries out I sprinkle a gallon of water over it to keep it moist underneath, but it usually always stays dry on top.

Hope you enjoy the video!!

Beautiful snake !!!

You're braver than me just holding the food in your hand !!

I used to use tongs and had some near scrapes with my Retic nearly getting my hand

I now drop feed but I always put some card down over the substrate as I've seen reports of snakes ingesting substrate with the rat/mouse and having problems with compaction...



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Reinz]

Wow, that is one calm Retic feeding.

Beautiful speciman CChard!