My boy BCI ate again

[Dutti]

My boy BCI ate that jumbo rat which he refused for a week. Why did he refuse to eat it for about a week? I made a mistake. I moved him to his new big adult enclosure and i did not provide him with a hide although he always had a hide in his old enclosure. I thought he might get used to not having a hide. And because i use Aspen, i thought he can burrow himself. He did burrow himself a lot and refused to eat, obviously he did not feel secure without a hide. It was unusual for him to refuse food when his stomach is empty. So i knew something was wrong and i gave him his hide back. And the next day he ate that rat.

[Sauzo]

Psst, I'll let you in on a secret...the reason he didnt eat wasnt because of the lack of a hide......IT WAS BECAUSE HE WAS BEING FED JUMBO 400+ GRAM RATS EVERY OTHER WEEK LOL.

Lol you know i am almost looking forward to your posts Dutti. I find them rather comical now

I actually thought you were this guy on the Boa Constrictor Keepers FB page that got thrown out of the group. He would always contradict a bunch of us when we told new people the proper feeding schedule and size prey for boas. He would chime in with 'you guys are too much, i feed my 4 ft boa a jumbo rat every 2 weeks'. Well after he gave that bad advice quite a few times and also gave other bad husbandry advice, the admins tossed him out because of all the bad advice he was giving to new boa owners. But he reminded me of you....or maybe he was you lol.

Keep it strong brutha!! And it sounds like that boa is about ready to be upsized to small goats or pigs. You should try it!! You'll have the worlds largest boa on record....for about 3 years

[Dutti]

Psst, I'll let you in on a secret...the reason he didnt eat wasnt because of the lack of a hide......IT WAS BECAUSE HE WAS BEING FED JUMBO 400+ GRAM RATS EVERY OTHER WEEK LOL.

Lol you know i am almost looking forward to your posts Dutti. I find them rather comical now

I actually thought you were this guy on the Boa Constrictor Keepers FB page that got thrown out of the group. He would always contradict a bunch of us when we told new people the proper feeding schedule and size prey for boas. He would chime in with 'you guys are too much, i feed my 4 ft boa a jumbo rat every 2 weeks'. Well after he gave that bad advice quite a few times and also gave other bad husbandry advice, the admins tossed him out because of all the bad advice he was giving to new boa owners. But he reminded me of you....or maybe he was you lol.

Keep it strong brutha!! And it sounds like that boa is about ready to be upsized to small goats or pigs. You should try it!! You'll have the worlds largest boa on record....for about 3 years

I actually posted this to remind people how important the hide is. He really refused to eat because i took his hide away. As soon as i gave him his hide back he ate again. My boa is 5 foot now and usually on large rats (300 grams) every two weeks. I fed him last 2 times jumbo rats (around 400 grams) because i feed live. Let me explain, when i go to buy a rat for him, i don,t weigh it at the shop, i do that at home. At the shop i have to use my eyes to evaluate the rat size. When i get home i weigh it before feeding it to him. As to be expected, sometimes the rats that i buy are bigger than i wanted. By the way, between the last 2 jumbo rats which he ate, there were 3 weeks time. I did not advice anyone anywhere to feed like me. I always adviced people to feed less than me. If someone has 5 foot boa like me, i have adviced to feed it medium rats. This was my advice to other. I usually upsize the food of my boa if he remained hungry after eating.

[Sauzo]

I actually posted this to remind people how important the hide is. He really refused to eat because i took his hide away. As soon as i gave him his hide back he ate again. My boa is 5 foot now and usually on large rats (300 grams) every two weeks. I fed him last 2 times jumbo rats (around 400 grams) because i feed live. Let me explain, when i go to buy a rat for him, i don,t weigh it at the shop, i do that at home. At the shop i have to use my eyes to evaluate the rat size. When i get home i weigh it before feeding it to him. As to be expected, sometimes the rats that i buy are bigger than i wanted. By the way, between the last 2 jumbo rats which he ate, there were 3 weeks time. I did not advice anyone anywhere to feed like me. I always adviced people to feed less than me. If someone has 5 foot boa like me, i have adviced to feed it medium rats. This was my advice to other. I usually upsize the food of my boa if he remained hungry after eating.

So let me get this right....you advise people the correct way to feed a boa yet you over feed your own boa. I just dont understand the reasoning there unless you are trying to kill your boa.....

And another tip for you....a snake will remain hungry for hours after eating unless like i said, you give it a meal so large that it couldnt fit anymore in. I have fed my 7+ ft retic 2XL guinea pigs which are 450ish grams. And guess what, he was still hungry for about 30 mins afterwards. But once the food settled into him, he went into a food coma for almost 2 weeks. That is why people say you shouldnt feed large constrictors outside the cage. Once a snake is in feeding mode, it takes a while to turn it off. It's not like an on/off light switch.

i believe your main problem is you have over fed that boa for so long that he has stretched out to accommodate such a large meal that you can no longer use the width of the snake as a guide since it's size is so skewed now. You would have to basically start from the basics and with it being 5 ft, either drop it down to small or medium rats every 2-4 weeks until the boa actually uses some of that excess food storage and puts it to some length growth and get back more into proportion.

I too fed my large girl a little more than optimal when she was a baby but after talking to lots of people, i dropped her down to small rats on a longer schedule and she gained a lot more length and lost a lot of the thickness. Now she is a nice tall oval. Like i have said, a boas thickness should be about half its height.

Anyways, always entertaining here. And pretty soon, you will be needing to upgrade that boa from large to jumbo rats lol. That is going to be epic. Your boa which is smaller than my retic is going to be eating more food than my retic. I dont think i have seen that before.