Couple questions about my young red tail

[Dianne]

It’s difficult to estimate age with snakes because there are so many variables: size at birth, size of prey and frequency of feeding, how quickly after birth he/she started feeding, and genetics just to name the main ones. Looking at your picture, a pure guess is a few months old.

Boas do not have the metabolism of some other species, such as ball pythons or rats snakes, that can handle a lot of over feeding. Slow and steady is the game with them. It has been many years since I had baby or juvenile boas, but I fed one prey item that was about the same width as the thickest part of the snake once per week for the first year to year and a half. I’d say an adult mouse (or rat pup if you want to switch now) looks appropriate based on the photo.

After the year to year and a half mark, I changed the boas feeding schedule to every 2 weeks. My mature adult boas typically received one appropriately sized prey item every 2-3 weeks. I only have one female left now, her name is Duncan. She is 26 and is fed one extra large rat on this schedule and is doing very well.