Okay about feeding my Colombian Red Tail...

Anubis was fed on Wednesday of last week....tonight he shows interest in feeding again...went into his cage and totally had a feeding strike at me...I'm feeding him small rats (F/T)...I don't want to have a consistently hungry Boa. Should I be feeding something larger or more often...not totally sure how old he is but got him on May 31st of this year and weighs 110g and is at 2ft exactly...(just weighted and measured him now) i know hes hungry cause he reacts the exact same way every time its the "official" day to feed....just wait or feed the hungry boy?

A small rat weighs between 46 and 85 grams from most suppliers. If your snake just ate one and hasn't pooped yet so the 110 grams isn't an "empty weight" then it's overfed. Get an empty weight on it and then figure out what size feeder it should be taking. Up to a year old they should be on a 10-14 day schedule, then I add a week for every year they age until they reach adulthood. I feed adult females every four weeks, males every 5-6 weeks.

Boas also should not be fed heavily as being fat can cut their lifespan in half. They also are opportunistic and unlike ball pythons will "beg" even if they just ate yesterday. For babies I want to just barely see a lump, and adults get a rabbit whose thickness is about half of the snake's girth.

If yours has a strong food response I would suggest starting to tap train it.

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Originally Posted by bcr229

A small rat weighs between 46 and 85 grams from most suppliers. If your snake just ate one and hasn't pooped yet so the 110 grams isn't an "empty weight" then it's overfed. Get an empty weight on it and then figure out what size feeder it should be taking. Up to a year old they should be on a 10-14 day schedule, then I add a week for every year they age until they reach adulthood. I feed adult females every four weeks, males every 5-6 weeks.

Boas also should not be fed heavily as being fat can cut their lifespan in half. They also are opportunistic and unlike ball pythons will "beg" even if they just ate yesterday. For babies I want to just barely see a lump, and adults get a rabbit whose thickness is about half of the snake's girth.

If yours has a strong food response I would suggest starting to tap train it.

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That's what I've noticed with Anubis......he does "beg" it's kinda cute cause it's not the norm that I've seen with Ramsey (my oldest BP) so that's why I wanted to reach out, everything I've been researching says ones every week till they get older, then span it out to two weeks then once a month....he was on hopers but honestly small rats don't even make any bump or anything...thanks for the insight!


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Gus Rentfro had a web page that talked about feeding boas.

bcr touched on very good points about feeding a young boa.

I will just add that ALL signs of any previous meal should be gone. Gus mentioned that your boa should have completely eliminated all waste before feeding again.

There is also scientific/biological evidence that shows the enlargement of the organs and a mass transfer of energy in a boa that is digesting a meal. The process should fully complete before feeding again in order to let the system reset.

There is more to the process and a great deal of variability. Wild boas will often feast and famine. It is their design by nature. If you do some back to back feeding you will not necessarily harm your boa, but you have to make it up on the other end.

Seasonality is important. Adult boas do not eat year round and really shouldn't.

Now a younger snake being fed small meals weekly will get a good start and grow quickly.

My advice is to read THE COMPLETE BOA CONSTRICTOR by Vincent Russo. There is excellent feeding advice in the book and also a good explanation of the "seasonality" (seasonal changes that the animal follows) that is worth reading.

In a nutshell, feed conservatively.

In nature the largest boas are the oldest boas. Your snake will grow healthy and live long if you don't over feed.

If you are feeding your 2' boa small rats, you are overfeeding him. My 2' Suriname girl gets around a 12g hopper mouse every 10 days and my 2' Peruvian Longtail gets the same, a 12g hopper mouse every 10 days. I don't go up to weaned rats until they are about 1.5 years old and over 3'.

It's next to impossible to starve a boa and boas are ALWAYS hungry. I can feed my 6.5' girl her large rat and the next day, she will still be hungry.

All of my boas perk up when I slide open a cage door. Once they realize food isn't coming, they lay down disappointed.

You want to feed it prey that will leave no lump or a very very slight lump in them. If they look like they ate a football after feeding, you are doing 100% wrong. Now my retic, he eats like a beast and gets 2XL guinea pigs or colossal rats but he's a python which is a whole different game than boas.

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Originally Posted by bcr229

Boas also should not be fed heavily as being fat can cut their lifespan in half. They also are opportunistic and unlike ball pythons will "beg" even if they just ate yesterday. For babies I want to just barely see a lump, and adults get a rabbit whose thickness is about half of the snake's girth.

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To me this is not true. If Boas are not hungry they will reject the food. Of course if they are underfed they will be or seems to be always hungry and they won,t reject food. But when they are properly fed they will definitly reject the food if not hungry.

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Originally Posted by Dutti

To me this is not true. If Boas are not hungry they will reject the food. Of course if they are underfed they will be or seems to be always hungry and they won,t reject food. But when they are properly fed they will definitly reject the food if not hungry.

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You do realize boas are opportunistic feeders so they will always eat when offered unless you are offering them so much that you basically are completely overwhelming their ability to even hold any more food. In the wild boas, eat maybe once every couple months unless they are lucky and in the winter, they go months without food. To add to this, they also must expend energy to find food or wait in ambush which could take months for a meal to wander by and then they gotta pray they dont miss.

In captivity, they do nothing but sit not wasting any calories and just being fed. That's like you sitting in a chair all day and doing nothing but eating. What do you think will happen to you.

And you do realize boas have a much slower metabolism. They poop maybe twice a month if that. Also you do know that boas and pythons organs actually engorge and double in size as well as work harder after a meal for about 10-14 days. This means if you constantly feed your snake food, its' organs are doubled in size and working double time 24/7.

No offense but you really need to do a lot more research before giving advice on feeding for boas. I guarantee if you feed your boa by your standards of feeding, you will be lucky if your boa lives past 10 years.

And here is reading for you about the organs physical changes that they go through after eating.
https://www.uta.edu/news/releases/20...-intestine.php

And to add, if you did this with a BCC, you would have a dead boa in a year if lucky. Too much food for them leads to regurgitation which can become chronic in them which leads to death. They don't handle food nearly as well as a BCI but even your standards will kill a BCI in 10 years if lucky.

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

If you are feeding your 2' boa small rats, you are overfeeding him. My 2' Suriname girl gets around a 12g hopper mouse every 10 days and my 2' Peruvian Longtail gets the same, a 12g hopper mouse every 10 days. I don't go up to weaned rats until they are about 1.5 years old and over 3'.

It's next to impossible to starve a boa and boas are ALWAYS hungry. I can feed my 6.5' girl her large rat and the next day, she will still be hungry.

All of my boas perk up when I slide open a cage door. Once they realize food isn't coming, they lay down disappointed.

You want to feed it prey that will leave no lump or a very very slight lump in them. If they look like they ate a football after feeding, you are doing 100% wrong. Now my retic, he eats like a beast and gets 2XL guinea pigs or colossal rats but he's a python which is a whole different game than boas.

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I fed my 15 month old male BCI (4.5 feet) XL live rat on the 24th of July and he went into shedding after that. He shed his skin on the 4th of August. Now its 10 days after he shed and he is not hungry, and if i offer him food he will definitely reject it. He has to poop first and 24 hours after that he will start feeling hungry again.

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Originally Posted by Dutti

I fed my 15 month old male BCI (4.5 feet) XL live rat on the 24th of July and he went into shedding after that. He shed his skin on the 4th of August. Now its 10 days after he shed and he is not hungry, and if i offer him food he will definitely reject it. He has to poop first and 24 hours after that he will start feeling hungry again.

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Lol he rejected food because an XL rat is WAY too much for a 4.5' boa. Ask any breeder online or any sites and they will all tell you also that an XL rat is WAY too much. The only boas that need anything over a large rat are very large females 8'+. Even my 6.5' female gets a large rat every 3-4 weeks. Now my retic who is 7' gets 2XL guinea pigs or colossal rats every 10 days but thats a python. Completely different game. My 6.5' took over 5 years to get that size as i got her as an 18" worm. My retic took 9 months to go from 2' to 7'.

And most snakes will go into shed when bumped up in size. All of my snakes have done that and also when switched from mice to rats, they usually will have a growth spurt.

Like i said, you need to do a lot more research. Fat on boas dont show up until its too late. Fat builds around their organs first, then outward. So by the time you see fat rolls on them or 'boa hips', the fat around the vent, the years of life have already been shortened. And it is a lot easier to put weight on a boa than it is to take it off. An overweight boa can take a year or more to lose weight and get back to the nice square shape depending how overweight it is.

Like i said, ask any other breeder if their 15 month old males are eating XL rats lol. A 15 month old on its best day would be on small rats. My almost 1.5 year old salmon DH sharp snowglow male is still on adult mice every 10 days. He wont go to weaned rats until probably close to 2 years old.

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

Lol he rejected food because an XL rat is WAY too much for a 4.5' boa. Ask any breeder online or any sites and they will all tell you also that an XL rat is WAY too much. The only boas that need anything over a large rat are very large females 8'+. Even my 6.5' female gets a large rat every 3-4 weeks. Now my retic who is 7' gets 2XL guinea pigs or colossal rats every 10 days but thats a python. Completely different game. My 6.5' took over 5 years to get that size as i got her as an 18" worm. My retic took 9 months to go from 2' to 7'.

And most snakes will go into shed when bumped up in size. All of my snakes have done that and also when switched from mice to rats, they usually will have a growth spurt.

Like i said, you need to do a lot more research. Fat on boas dont show up until its too late. Fat builds around their organs first, then outward. So by the time you see fat rolls on them or 'boa hips', the fat around the vent, the years of life have already been shortened. And it is a lot easier to put weight on a boa than it is to take it off. An overweight boa can take a year or more to lose weight and get back to the nice square shape depending how overweight it is.

Like i said, ask any other breeder if their 15 month old males are eating XL rats lol. A 15 month old on its best day would be on small rats. My almost 1.5 year old salmon DH sharp snowglow male is still on adult mice every 10 days. He wont go to weaned rats until probably close to 2 years old.

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I took a video of that feeding. You can watch it and see the size of the rat yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEM8dguV3po

And notice how that rat is a lot thicker than your boa. The rule of thumb for feeding boas is the prey should be as thick as the thickest part of the snake or slightly less. So it should leave no lump to a very very slight lump. And in the video, that rat is way too big. Thats like the size rat my 6.5' female eats every 3-4 weeks.

I'm honestly not here to argue the feeding of boas. People will either listen or they wont. If they wont, then they will learn from their own mistakes in about 10 years. The breeder for my sunglow overfed his first boa when he was young and it died at 10 years old from a heart attack. He learned from his mistakes as he breeds BCCs now more and has kind of gotten out of BCI morphs. And a BCC fed something big would for sure puke it up. Keep feeding your male like that and we can talk in 10 years :)

My advice is join the boa FB pages like Boa Constrictor Keepers, Boa Constrictor JB, Pure-Locality-Boas, Boa Constrictor Constrictor and others and ask around there for what everyones feeding schedules are. You will get the same answer i have given.

Anyways good luck.

Lol and don't even get me started on a 15 month old that's 4.5' long eating XL rats isn't the perfect example of power feeding. :) And after relooking at your video, that rat doesn't look like a XL to me, looks more like a large rat which is still too much. An XL rat is almost a foot long and about 300-350g. Larges are about 8" and 250g.

And overfeeding doesn't only mean feeding it lots of food, it also means feeding it the largest food it can take as often as it will take it which is pretty much your case.

Well, I'm glad I have all this info! Thank you all for this input! I'll definitely feed conservatively and the right size....I want my boy living 40+ years


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Originally Posted by Dutti

I took a video of that feeding. You can watch it and see the size of the rat yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEM8dguV3po

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You need to put that video behind a spoiler !!!

I did not want to see that !!


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The consensus is to feel slow. Different people do have different ideas on what that means. Especially since not everyone has access to every size of prey. So adjustments are made. So not everyone will give you the same answer exactly. You basically don't feed it like a python for the reasons stated.

The only times my boa has refused food was when she was deep in shed. Otherwise she'd probably eat every day.

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Originally Posted by Sauzo

And overfeeding doesn't only mean feeding it lots of food, it also means feeding it the largest food it can take as often as it will take it which is pretty much your case.

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No sir, this is not the largest food my male can take. I can assure you that he is capable of swallowing a much larger prey than that rat in the video. I give him his average size food, not too big and not too small. After eating he won't remain hungry and he starts moving as he usually does after less than 24 hours or maximum 36 to 48 hours after eating.

Any chance of a mod putting the LIVE feeding video behind a SPOILER or a WARNING tab ?

Feeding xl rats to a boa barely over a year and claiming you don't overfeed is perfect lol, I just love how oblivious people can be. My 6', 5 year old male boa gets large prey a couple times per year, usually he eats mediums with 3-4 weeks in between meals. I just bumped my 2 year old dumerils boa about 4' up to small rats every three weeks. Save money on rodents and extend your snakes lifespan, feed conservatively.

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Originally Posted by Zincubus

Any chance of a mod putting the LIVE feeding video behind a SPOILER or a WARNING tab ?

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Umm...you have to actively click on it to watch the video. It's not like it auto launches and plays for you.

I'll reiterate what I said in my first post. Or better yet just reread it.

If some people want to ignore Gus Rentfro's advice that's fine. He is a world authority on boa constrictors. He has successfully produced a perfect litter of babies that were mothered by a 30 year old boa. You rarely if ever see a 30 year old boa let alone one capable of producing babies. Gus and Vin Russo are close friends. Vin wrote the mentioned book

A 10 year old boa is not old.

Folks that have 20 plus year old boas however may be doing something correctly.
Read the book, study the species and learn the biology of the animal.

Most captive snakes are over fed.

In the wild it's feast and famine. In captivity it's about moderation, seasonality prey size and type.

Captive prey is fat compared to wild prey.

Think reptiles and their millions of years of successful evolution.

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Originally Posted by MasonC2K

Umm...you have to actively click on it to watch the video. It's not like it auto launches and plays for you.

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i agree with Zinc: we had no way of knowing it was a live feeding; it could have been f/t. i always mention in video posts about audio loudness, subject matter, and possible sensitive footage so that people won't be surprised or watch something that makes them uncomfortable. it's p standard internet etiquette, and the reason NSFW/NSFL tags are a thing. :)

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Originally Posted by tttaylorrr

i agree with Zinc: we had no way of knowing it was a live feeding; it could have been f/t. i always mention in video posts about audio loudness, subject matter, and possible sensitive footage so that people won't be surprised or watch something that makes them uncomfortable. it's p standard internet etiquette, and the reason NSFW/NSFL tags are a thing. :)

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To be honest , I'm a big softie . My heart bleads when I accidentally stand on a snail fgs .

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Originally Posted by Zincubus

To be honest , I'm a big softie . My heart bleads when I accidentally stand on a snail fgs .

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i am too; i was caught off guard here as well. #softiesforlife

Lots of great insight in this thread. I just bought Mr. Russo's book and plan to provide the best long term care and husbandry possible for the boa I ultimately get. I appreciate the words of those of you that have been doing the same for many years! Its gonna make my learning curve a lot shorter!

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Originally Posted by tttaylorrr

i agree with Zinc: we had no way of knowing it was a live feeding; it could have been f/t. i always mention in video posts about audio loudness, subject matter, and possible sensitive footage so that people won't be surprised or watch something that makes them uncomfortable. it's p standard internet etiquette, and the reason NSFW/NSFL tags are a thing. :)

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Oh I see what you mean. I feed live to 15 balls every week so that stuff doesn't bother me in the slightest. Hell, half the reason I got a snake in the first place was to watch it kill and eat. I have no love loss for mice and rats. But I can't bring myself to feed a live GP or Rabbits as I've had those as pets.

To get back into the spirit of this thread I'd reread what bcr, Sauzo and I have stated.

Boa constrictors, and really most other snakes have times of feast and famine. A great many colubrids will go into a state of inactivity during the cold months, boas and pythons also have seasonal peaks and valleys when it comes to feeding. It's not always about IF the snake will eat, of course they will when the opportunity presents itself most times.

However in nature, which is where these animals evolved to survive, that opportunity may rely on the hatching, birthing, or migration patterns of other animals.

Let me be clear here. NO snake in nature eats on a schedule, and no snake in nature eats well fed, FAT, captive bred prey.

The responsibility of the keeper is to recognize the biology of the animal. You can argue about captivity being different, and it is, but it will not supersede the millions and millions of years snakes and other reptiles have evolved and adapted to for their continual survival.

We are lucky enough to be able to keep and understand our snakes a little bit because of continual research and study. In reality, other than stopping human destruction their natural habitats, they don't need us to survive , and they certainly don't need to go off of a human designed feeding "schedule".

Feeding can be a very involved subject if you want a very long lived boa constrictor.

I wish everybody the best of luck. I can gauge from conversations in this thread and other threads on this board who will have the longest living snakes.

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Originally Posted by Gio

To get back into the spirit of this thread I'd reread what bcr, Sauzo and I have stated.

Boa constrictors, and really most other snakes have times of feast and famine. A great many colubrids will go into a state of inactivity during the cold months, boas and pythons also have seasonal peaks and valleys when it comes to feeding. It's not always about IF the snake will eat, of course they will when the opportunity presents itself most times.

However in nature, which is where these animals evolved to survive, that opportunity may rely on the hatching, birthing, or migration patterns of other animals.

Let me be clear here. NO snake in nature eats on a schedule, and no snake in nature eats well fed, FAT, captive bred prey.

The responsibility of the keeper is to recognize the biology of the animal. You can argue about captivity being different, and it is, but it will not supersede the millions and millions of years snakes and other reptiles have evolved and adapted to for their continual survival.

We are lucky enough to be able to keep and understand our snakes a little bit because of continual research and study. In reality, other than stopping human destruction their natural habitats, they don't need us to survive , and they certainly don't need to go off of a human designed feeding "schedule".

Feeding can be a very involved subject if you want a very long lived boa constrictor.

I wish everybody the best of luck. I can gauge from conversations in this thread and other threads on this board who will have the longest living snakes.

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Honesty Gio, you have by far opened my eyes, my BCI WILL be properly fed and raised, I want my babies to live the longest, it's not about who's the biggest fastest, but who's the eldest...and that right there starts from the beginning....understanding the breed...ty for alllllllll of your insight and trust me, it won't be for nothing !!!



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I feed a fuzzy or crawler rat every 10 days or so. She's almost 3 ft now. She is always hungry but I try not to overfeed.