Quote Originally Posted by reptileexperts View Post
I put a turtle in a 10 gallon aquarium and it never outgrew it. True story, on its 10th birthday it was still the size of a quarter, and happy and healthy!

OK OK, Boelens are a rare thing in this hobby, they are expensive, extremely slow to age, and people have constantly been unsuccessful breeding them in captivity, but that's beyond the point. Your question raises a point that needs to be answered: Growth potential does not result in a guarantee. The retic world is well aware of this with the vast majority never meeting there true potential, and some being over achievers. I'd say at 4 years old, your Boelen's will likely still grow given it has food and heat to increase its metabolism. As a general rule with Morelia, you can increase the food size, without much hurt, but if your snake begins to grow outwardly instead of in length, its a good time to cut back the food intake. My Irian Jaya pair are incredibly slow growers despite being fed large prey items their entire life, just some do not grow that fast. My male just turned 4 and is only about 4 ft in length, but healthy, and just gave me a perfect shed. The female is about 5' and the same age. She's starting to add girth, so her food will slow down a little bit. . . the take home message from this ramble is quite simple. Some snakes will get big, some will stay small. Just like in humans the rate at which they metabolize will vary and with that variation will come growth variation.

On a side note, truly jealous of a 4 year old Boelen's. Please post pictures, they are a true gem in this hobby!

*side bar* If I was in your case wanting that size range of snake, I would've went Black-headed Python personally.
I had a black Headed female before I got the female Boelens, which is one of my favorites. Although she died at 7 years old from FLD. Her underside actually started to turn green and was passing neon green urates. She was 8.5ft and by no means fat which my vet at the time agreed. I was feeding her 1 large rat every 7 days, which is why I raised the question 1 large rat vs two medium rats. In the end, I don't think large rats are bad and my black head just got FLD with me doing things correctly. After she passed I wanted to get another python and reached out to many about my 8-11' size range and heard the boelens is just as big as the BH and more heavily bodied. Well, this doesn't seem to be the case. My female boelens who turned 4 years old 30 days ago is about 7'3" and I just fed her a 186gram rat and feel that it may have been to large, I think I will back down to 170grams.