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  1. #1
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    12-28-2016
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    New adult female feeding strikes on me - how to judge hunger/weight?

    I recently adopted an adult female normal morph. She's 5-6 years old, 1200g, and ~ 4.5 feet long. She'd been kept in a 16-gallon aquarium with mesh top and a single 8W heating pad in the center. No hides, but an oversized towel that curled up on the ends. It also has melted bits on the mesh from a heat lamp improperly placed at some point. They said she'd been being fed 2 adult mice per feeding, live in cage. They also said she was super tame and loved being held.

    I've moved her into a 321 boaphile with hides and proper humidity, temps right now run ~78F on cold wall and ~90F w/ probe on hot end of tank under the hide. She moves around often and doesn’t seem to prefer one end or the other.

    I've had her three weeks and fed her a medium (140g) f/t rat, then 7 days later a small live rat, then again 5 days later a small rat, all in a large cardboard box out of her enclosure. She’s had 3 urates, but no bowel movement.

    Today (4 days after last feed) I took her out to clean her enclosure, my SO held her for a ~10 minutes while I cleaned, then I held her for ~3 minutes with her acting normally and just exploring with tongue flickering before she started to nose along my forearm with her snout. I immediately lifted her neck and she moved away, but as I was moving to put her back in her enclosure, she turned around and nosed into my arm again. She didn’t strike, she just slowly put her nose against my arm and pushed inward to open her mouth, just like she would with a dead rat. I caught her neck quick enough to prevent her lower jaw from catching, but she still got a few teeth into me. Clearly feeding behavior and not defensive.

    This is after another strike a week ago, where she grabbed and held onto my pectoral after nosing underneath the open zipper of my sweatshirt. That also seemed to be feeding behavior.

    I’m wondering if 1200g sounds underweight for her age, and if so, how much and how often should I be feeding her? Additionally, what is a good target weight? According to care sheets (5-7% body weight/week) I feel I’ve been slightly over feeding her so far, but she seems to be hunting all the time and always hungry. For a snake that was billed as enjoying being held, and who in general is very easy to pick up, she seems to be trying to eat me an awful lot. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her defensive, she just seems to be hunting. Is this an indicator of hunger/underfeeding, or is she just a normal snake and I smell like rat?

    Edit: Formatting
    Last edited by VorpalZard; 12-28-2016 at 01:54 AM.

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