Alright, you guys have me almost convinced!!

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

Well good news is he ate a weaned rat no problem other than being kind of retarded and trying to eat the ass about 5 times before finally finding the head under his body lol. Now hes curled up behind his hide with his head laying on top of the hide staring out the front of the cage lol. Seems hes not impressed with RBI hides. He prefers to sit curled up behind them and use them pillows. And yes Gio, I know I need a dang camera lol. Need to try and scrounge up the cash for one. I blew WAY too much the past month on snakes and Herpstats and other accessories :D

And honestly, yours looks bigger Gio. Mine might be older and possibly longer(don't know since I don't see yours stretched) but he is definitely thinner. Mines more streamline. Might just be the black making yours look thicker but I always thought white made you look fat and black was slimming lol.

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Mine will occasionally get ADD and forget she's trying to eat and get way distracted with her surroundings even with the rat coiled up. Almost never uses a hide and also prefers to go snoopy style and lay on top of the warm hide. She's actually used both hides the last few days though. She's an interesting critter for sure


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Originally Posted by jmcrook

My SD is only 8 months old so I can't speak from the perspective of having an adult snake but she is around 5' now and is amazing. Her parents were wild caught Kalatoa 5'dad and 6' mom and I'm guessing mine will end up around 6-7', maybe even 8' at her growth rate. I would guess with close to 50% mainland blood the one you're looking at stands a chance to get larger than 10'. I would ask reptile experts on here. He's also got a bunch of great SD related videos up on YouTube.
I will say that my retic is very fast and very curious. A little cage defensive when first getting her out but she's a puppy dog out of her enclosure. Always on the go and super enjoyable to work with. Definitely keeps me on my toes


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If your retic is 5' at 8 months that's about average growth for mainlands. I'd expect an SD to be 3'-4' at that age. My mainland girl was 4'-4.5' at a year, but was drastically underfed for the first 6 months of her life (a single fuzzy mouse every 2 weeks). She's 2 years old and 7' now, we'll have to see where she ends up on the scale. Retics don't stop growing at a year, and being so close to 6' already, it's doubtful that her growth will stop at just 6'-7'. They normally hit adult sizes at a 3-4 years on the average feeding schedule, and at 5-7 years on a conservative feeding schedule from what I've seen.

As far as my experience with my female mainland, she's been an absolute dream. I would put her docility on par with my boa constrictors, but she has the activity and awareness of my garters. I would honestly say the garters and her are very comparable on the "intelligence" level. She comes right up at me any time I walk into the room unless she's sleeping (and she has to be in a deep sleep too) or in shed. I touch her with the hook and she immediately backs off. Still is a little curious, but not quite so quick to the trigger. Then I can pull her out, sometimes she gives a little fight, but usually crawls out with me. As she's gotten bigger, she's becoming more and more twitchy, though, and actually bucks me off if she's shedding.

She's not quick to bite, though, I've held her and propped open her mouth several times without her attempting to bite me and with little resistance once she expended some energy - she's like the Energizer bunny, always go go go. She's only gotten defensive with me 2 or 3 times. One time was when I was popping open a container I had her in to weigh her. The vibrations from the lid popping off surprised her and she stiffened out, flattening her head when I took it off. I figured, just reach in and grab her and she'd see she was fine. Nailed me on the finger, but then immediately calmed down. The other time I remember was when I had her outside. She was sniffing at the air, periscoping and looking around. I figured I'd let her do her thing since she was sitting still for once, but that apparently was a bad idea because when I moved she went on the defensive. I tried bringing my hand slowly at her from ground level to give her a gentle stroke to let her know it was me, but she struck at me and started moving off away from me with her head flattened out like a ratsnake and body all puffed up, with her head and belly off the ground, moving sideways and staring at me. It was actually kinda comical but I didn't want her shooting off and getting overly stressed, and at 4' at the time it let me know this wasn't something I'd want to deal with as an adult. lol Once she made it past me, she lowered her head and slowly slithered off. I was able to touch her and pick her up without her turning on me, and held her in my hands as she sighed and huffed all the pent-up air out of her lungs. I haven't had any defensive displays in at least a year now, though.

Overall, very docile but extremely active snake. She will reach and climb onto anything nearby, and never sits still for a single instant unless she tires herself out. Then she sits there wheezing just long enough to go back to action, but she never gives herself enough time to catch her breath so she stops and starts until I put her up. I'm her human jungle gym (for as long as she's small enough anyways lol).

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

Thanks Reinz. I'm pretty well tapped on my snake allotment now haha so you wont be seeing any new acquisitions for at least a year...or more lol.

@Gio-Hey I know your little man is about the same size as mine. What do you feed your guy? My little man is about 2.5' and a little thicker than a stick of pepperoni. I sent Kris an email as the other one I was going to get was eating small rats or adult mice but I'm not sure about this guy. And I don't see how he could eat a small rat. I mean a small rat would be over double his width lol. Would look like he ate a football and i'd probably have to roll him onto the flexwatt lol.

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I'd probably personally do weaned rats, but he should be able to take a small rat. These guys digest bigger meals just as easily as regular-sized meals, so they're really hard to pinpoint what size meal they should eat (I generally go by 15-20% of their weight for babies and now I'm just feeding whatever jumbo+ sized rat I have or my smaller rabbits). My girl is pushing 7', normally eats a 1/2 lb jumbo rat or 8 oz+ rabbit, but can take a 1 lb rabbit no problem and you wouldn't know she ate 3 days later. I try not to feed her such large meals all the time, though. I've been feeding her every other week since she started eating large rats.

I was feeding her bigger meals for a bit, but she started to get kinda uninterested in food, so I've stepped her back down in prey size and she's back to pounding her food. I gave her a rabbit a month or two ago, her favorite meal of all time, and it took several minutes of real convincing to get her to actually take it. And these are meals she'll hit the glass for, too, she won't do that for a rat.

That's like my BP. When she was eating medium rats, she would be sporatic with feeding. Then she got scared of medium rats lol. She goes gung ho for small rats though and those keep her regular with a weekly feeding or possibly 2 weeks.

As for the retic, i'll probably just stick to weaned rats like you said since I plan on feeding him every week just like my JCP. Will make for an easier schedule for me to sorta remember, everyone 2-3 weeks except the retic and JCP who get food every week. And yeah this little guy was a champ today. I opened the bag and he was happy to come out and sit on me and check me and everything out. No defense or flinch or anything. Then within 2 hours he was going gung ho for the F/T weaned rat. He actually checked out the shelf in his T10 and as jmcrook says, he likes to snoopy on top of his hides. He was born 5-18-16 and is 2.5'. I was floored though how he packed in that rat being a little thicker than a peperoni stick lol. And once he came out of retard mode and figured out eating ass first wasn't working and found the head, he had that rat down in about 1 min lol.