How to keep retics on the smaller side? (Mainlands)

[John1982]

Tell me, do you honestly think a retic in the wild eats similar to the animals we keep in captivity? Are you that Naive? Have you ever seen pictures straight out of the skinning factories, of animals caught IN THE WILD? Smaller retics turn up often, in the 10-14' range, this seems about average for a mature adult in the wild. Will they eventually grow much larger, sure, is it common? nope, huge retics are a rarity in the wild, and they need a lot of factors lining up to grow to a monster size- one that is EASILY achievable in a captive setting.

A mainland female, if you feed it on average 14-16ft, a male, 10-14ft.

A mainland female, if you want to keep it manageable: 12-14ft, males 8-10ft, and there is NOTHING wrong with them being this size, frankly from all the animals pulled from the wild I've seen, and pictures directly from the field, this seems about average for an adult retic- and it's pretty common practice to keep males that size anyway.

I'm not advocating you starve the animal to keep it tiny, but you certainly don't have to shoot for an massive snake just because it's a retic.

These people are hunting the snakes. It seems common sense to me but I'll spell it out for you anyway. There will obviously be a size threshold in which the animals become more conspicuous. Based on your data this size for retics is 10-14' and has absolutely no bearing on the actual adult size of the animal, wild or captive. If we want more accurate data it needs to be gathered from areas that aren't heavily harvested for snake hides - you're using skewed data so your false conclusions are excusable. The availability of food the seasons before capture has a huge impact on how fast they have grown but I would venture a guess that very few of the 12-14 foot specimens that are female are old snakes. Again, not making the argument you think you are with this data.

I'm not against feeding snakes less than is commonly accepted but telling someone a mainland female will cap out at 12-14 feet is ludicrous at best. Where do you have data that suggests you can keep a mainland female at 12-14 feet for the entirety of her life? I saw the video where Jay explains his extensive research and data. He has 1 female at 5 years of age that he fed less the first few years of her life and now that she's breeding he's under the impression that she will no longer grow as all her stores will go towards egg making... Thankfully Jay puts out lots of youtube videos so people can form their own opinions of the man and decide which, if any, of his ideas are worth their weight.