Teddy updates and pics [Archive] - sSNAKESs : Reptile Forum

sockSnek

11-11-16, 06:11 PM

It's been a week since I got this year old JCP and he's been doing pretty well. He's twitchy, but he's a lot more chill now and has been comfortable climbing around on his branch in the open.

I'm now pretty sure he's small for his age. He was born September 2015 and is only 63g. He also just looks thin to me. They were feeding him hopper mice, so I got a couple of those, but they're only like 1x his girth. I fed him one on Wednesday and he took it immediately.

http://i.imgur.com/WSfiAS7l.jpg

Check out those teeth.

http://i.imgur.com/L236M2Vl.jpg

I got 6 mice, so I'm thinking about giving him 2 next time and switching him to rats after that.

Speaking of which, I am now 2 for 2 for snakes going blue within a week of getting them.

http://i.imgur.com/aBUzFcVl.jpg

He's still very pretty, but I can't wait to see him after the shed. :rolleyes:

trailblazer295

11-11-16, 06:42 PM

He is a awesome looking carpet. 63g sounds very small for a yearling. My girl was hatched this spring and weighs 60gish (she is still flighty). Your guy seems to have a larger head compared to his neck. Do you know the feeding schedule? Even if he is small and undersized don't be quick to pump him full of food to have him catch up. Someone more experienced with undersized snakes will chime in on an appropriate feeding regime.

sockSnek

11-11-16, 06:51 PM

I don't know the feeding schedule. :/ Based on what people had said in my other thread, it doesn't really feel like I'm pushing him by giving him 2 hoppers, but if anyone can confirm or deny that, it would make me feel a little better.

The other food problem I'm about to have is that my local reptile store only has f/t rat pups and bigger. I think fuzzies are closer to the right size for him, but I don't know of any alternative other than petsmart and theirs are surprisingly expensive. That's not really a big deal since I'm still just feeding a snake once a week, but it's annoying, and I prefer to avoid big pet shops.

trailblazer295

11-11-16, 06:56 PM

You'll want to get him eating rats as soon as possible even if you rotate them with mice. So he eats them until he grows up to pups. You won't want a jungle on mice only.

sockSnek

11-11-16, 06:59 PM

I'm planning on switching him after 2 more feedings just to use up my mice. He's been eating mice for over a year so another 2 weeks is probably not going to make a big difference.

Also I may have potentially just found rat fuzzies on craigslist. I was not expecting that.

EL Ziggy

11-11-16, 09:36 PM

Teddy's looking good sock. I wouldn't worry about his small size at all. Once you get him on a more growth oriented feeding regiment he should bulk up pretty quickly. I got a yearling male coastal in September 2015 and he was only 85g. He's easily 1300g now. My jungle was 31g when he arrived as a 2 month old in September 2015 and he weighed 1020g in August 2016. Get your boy some rat fuzzys after you finish off those mice hoppers and give him one of those every 5-7 days. I've scaled my feedings back to every 10-14 days now.

toddnbecka

11-12-16, 12:21 AM

You could certainly feed him 2 or 3 each time, when you have similar-size rats available feed a mouse then follow up quickly with a rat while he's still in feeding mode. My baby carpet was taking hopper mice as a baby, and I was feeding him 1-2 adult mice weekly until he escaped his tank and ate a tub full of breeding mice. The 6 pregnant females went first, and I found him with the single male still in coils. I wondered where he was going to put that one, lol. After that I moved him to small rats, he hasn't had mice since then.

dannybgoode

11-12-16, 01:30 AM

Good to hear your getting him on to rats. My IJ was on mice in the store and I switched him to rats when I got him. He didn't bat an eyelid and took the rat with no hesitation whatsoever.

Keep the pictures coming-looks a great snake.

Tsubaki

11-12-16, 05:49 AM

Great looking snake! :D

sockSnek

11-12-16, 12:08 PM

Thanks for the advice guys. :) I'll definitely have more pictures as he sheds and grows.

sockSnek

11-14-16, 10:38 PM

No shed yet, but he's mostly cleared up. The humidity is around 50-60 but I put some moss in his hide just in case. I really love his eyes. He bit me yesterday after I moved him to get a heat pad set up. (The lamp can't make the warm hide very warm without making the whole enclosure too warm.) I now have the tiniest holes in my thumb. Turns out he really doesn't like it when you just gently touch him on the side, but if you pick him up it's somehow fine. I haven't really had to use a hook to move him at all. But anyway, I don't think I'll have any more reasons to handle him before he sheds, so he can relax for a bit. And also maybe less poking when he's out from now on, no matter how soft he is. Sorry, snake. :sorry:

Here's him chilling out on a branch, being gorgeous.
http://i.imgur.com/2U6cIyAh.jpg

EL Ziggy

11-15-16, 08:46 AM

Looking good sock. I need to take some new pics of my carpets.

sockSnek

11-15-16, 10:25 AM

Thanks. :) And you should. I'd love to see them.

dannybgoode

11-15-16, 01:22 PM

Personally I'd stick with a heat bulb for a snake like a carpet. The temperature in the hide is likely to be just fine and bear in mind carpets are semi arboreal a heat mat will be doing nothing for the ambient temperatures as higher levels in the viv.

Further a heat mat does not provide a basking spot out of the hide.

My IJ is in a small 2'x18" at the moment and I have absolutely no issues at all getting a really good temperature gradient with a ceramic bulb and I'm confident there are suitably warm spots at different heights where various branches are.

sockSnek

11-15-16, 07:55 PM

I've got the lamp on too. The bulb isn't very warm. Turns out the maximum temperature I get out of it is still within his range. It's just that he seems to spend most of his time hiding, and I was worried the temp in there was too low for him to even digest properly. When his AP cage comes in, it'll just be the RHP.

He shed today, eyecaps, tail tip, all one piece. :) He also wrapped it all around the plants to make sure there were holes in it and made it as hard as possible for me to pull out. His colors are amazing but it was really hard to get a good picture without also getting a blurry head

Here's one of the pictures of my carpet. There's also a snake in my hand.
http://i.imgur.com/n4o3yhRh.jpg

He was pretty curious about the camera.
http://i.imgur.com/sjKDriwh.jpg

Here's his shed next to my corn snake's. It's amazing how much smaller his scales are, and it's pretty cool that you can see his pattern on it.
http://i.imgur.com/ZqYglgdh.jpg

sockSnek

11-15-16, 08:05 PM

Also food.

http://i.imgur.com/H9MFhmOh.jpg

Ok, no more updates for a while unless something significant happens.

dannybgoode

11-16-16, 12:13 AM

He's looking good after shed :). Good to hear re bulb. Very nice snake...

sockSnek

11-30-16, 09:24 PM

This guy is growing really quickly. He's up to 100g now. He was 62g when I got him and I've only had him for like 3 weeks. So apparently he's retaining about half the weight of the food I've fed him so far? That's kind of insane. Have your carpets grown like this?

Today he took his first rat with absolutely no fuss. I ended up skipping the fuzzies and just getting him the smallest rat pups at the store. They actually looked like a good size for him girth wise, which is kind of crazy because it was pretty much the same size as the adult mouse my 300g corn snake got today. Also, watching him haul that food baby up onto the branch was entertaining.

I was feeding them both every ~8 days, but I'm thinking about pushing it back to every ~10.

http://i.imgur.com/PI2Z0Foh.jpg

EL Ziggy

11-30-16, 11:31 PM

Glad he took the rat without issue sock. It sounds like he's growing well. My young carpets usually grow pretty quickly too. My jungle was 7 weeks old when I got him on 9/22/15.. He weighed 31g. He was up to 55g on 10/29/15 and 134g on 12/27/15. That's a tad more than quadruple his arrival date weight. The last time I weighed him was 8/20/16 and he was 1020g. Some breeders feed a bit more sparingly to keep their overhead down. Once we get them on a more frequent feeding regiment they usually gain size quickly. I probably feed my new carpets a little more often than you do. I feed them every 5-7 days for thier first year, every 7-10 days for their 2nd year, and every 10-14 days after that. Keep sharing those pics ;)

jossh27

12-01-16, 06:41 AM

sockSnek

01-05-17, 09:59 PM

Teddy officially weighs twice as much as when I first got him. I got a picture of him in the container he came him, but it's hard to tell if he looks much different. He does seem to fill out the bigger hide better though. Also, he just shed again yesterday and is now all shiny and new.

http://i.imgur.com/hdlbEbIl.jpg

When he sheds, he tries to see how many things he can wrap around to make it as hard as possible for me to pull it out.

http://i.imgur.com/J4MUzVil.jpg

EL Ziggy

01-05-17, 10:55 PM

That's one smokin jungle sock! I love his banding. Those colors are poppin already. Winner winner! :)

MartinD

01-06-17, 04:32 AM

Yep, have to agree with Ziggy, those colours (UK spelling lol) are fabulous, beautiful snake

sockSnek

01-06-17, 09:10 AM

Thank you! He looks so amazing after sheds. I just wish he didn't love hiding so much. I get the impression his colors will be fading by the time he's bigger and more confident.

I don't know if there's anything I can do to make him feel more comfortable with being out. Maybe covering up the glass sides?

EL Ziggy

01-06-17, 09:59 AM

@ sock- his colors shouldn't start to fade for several years. In fact they should continue to get brighter for a while yet. Don't worry about him hiding so much right now. He'll start perching and roaming his tank more as he acclimates to his new home. You are right though, covering the sides of his tank might help him feel more secure.

SWDK

01-06-17, 10:21 AM

That's a beautiful jungle. I agree with everyone above about the colors being bright already. Definite some more to go with this one.

sockSnek

02-18-17, 07:14 PM

Teddy's big boy cage came in today. It took AP almost 14 weeks to ship this to me, which is alright since I don't strictly need it yet, but that is about the longest I've ever had to wait for something to get shipped. The cats were all up in it the whole time we were putting it together. The cage is comically big for Teddy. It's a T12 and he's a 165g noodle. I wanted to take a picture, but the sealant is curing. He's 3ft 4in now (9in longer than 2.5 months ago), so if you follow the length+width cage rule, he has technically outgrown his 18x18x18in cube. I'll probably hold off on moving him over until his next cage clean in a couple weeks and do a dry run of the setup shortly before that.

I'm kind of surprised he hasn't shed more times. I've had him for 3+ months now and his weight is 2.5x what it used to be, but he's only shed twice.

Some context for his size. The pictures are a little exaggerated since he's all curled up like a pretend chondro in the first one, but he is noticeably thicker and stronger.
http://i.imgur.com/GzxTtufl.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/QahdEETl.jpg

Here's him being a sandwich, taken today.
http://i.imgur.com/eV7LzrUl.jpg

Also, just wanted to mention: Zig, your jungle looks so much like mine. Your thread is locked so I can't reply to it, but all your carpets are so pretty. :bouncy:

sockSnek

02-18-17, 07:17 PM

He also perches a lot more nowadays. Pretty much every day I get back from work I find him up there. He's still a spaz, but he seems braver than before.

EL Ziggy

02-18-17, 11:47 PM

Your jungle looks awesome sock! Are you going to divide his T12 or give him the whole thing?

sockSnek

02-19-17, 12:11 AM

Thanks Zig. Funny thing about that is I originally meant to buy a divider with the cage from AP, but then thought I wouldn't need it because I was just going to get him a smaller cage. Apparently I greatly underestimated the size difference between these. I mean I knew the dimensions but never bothered to picture it. It'll be a long time before he's big enough to really warrant a 4x2x2. I'm now thinking about making a makeshift divider with the packing styrofoam or just keeping him in the smaller enclosure for a little longer.

EL Ziggy

02-19-17, 01:02 AM

Do you have another critter to go into the 4x2 for now sock? If so, his current enclosure still works well. If not, AP should be able to send you a divider or you can make one like you stated. I have a few of my younger carpets in split T8s. One of the jungles is ready for an upgrade so I'll be ordering at least one new cage soon.

sockSnek

02-19-17, 08:34 AM

No more critters. I also got him a shelf, and I'm not sure if the AP dividers work with those. He'll probably keep living in his current home for a bit longer. I feel like the T12 will be overkill for a long time.

sockSnek

06-24-17, 03:24 PM

So it's been a while. I've being lurking around the forum all this time, but just don't really have anything interesting to say. Here's an update on Teddy though.

He's living in his big boy home now, which I am trying to plan some fancy art projects for. One of those will probably be a new hide since he's about to outgrow his "bigger" one. I also found the two most perfect branches in a friend's neighborhood that are the exact length to span corner to corner, which he seems to like.

http://i.imgur.com/n8sGhLI.jpg

He's almost 300g nowadays and is up to small rats. I'm excited for whem he really starts to get big. :) He's starting to have a little less of that bug-eyed baby face.

http://i.imgur.com/rF8ej2f.jpg

Scubadiver59

06-24-17, 03:45 PM

Nice looking setup and a very handsome boy you have there!

EL Ziggy

06-24-17, 10:40 PM

He's looking great and growing well Sock. Your enclosure looks nice too. How much do your small rats weigh? None of my carpets got smalls until they were about 500g.

trailblazer295

06-25-17, 07:07 AM

He is still a little cutie. He looks great, nice looking cage. Looks like he will have a lot of space to roam.

sockSnek

06-25-17, 11:29 AM

Thanks everyone. :)

The small rats are a little under 70g when I pick out the small ones. I just fed him his first one last week since the weaned rats are now barely 1x his girth and he hasn't grown much lately. Are you thinking I should hold off on the small rats for a little longer?

trailblazer295

06-25-17, 02:23 PM

Heavier smalls, I had one on the scale yesterday and it was 51g.

EL Ziggy

06-25-17, 05:54 PM

My 700g Olive and 700g Bredli are eating small rats every 7-10 days. Sometimes I throw in a chick. Carpets can take some pretty large meals. I feed my young carpets 10-20% of their body weight per feeding and I mix it up between smaller and larger meals. I would probably keep him on weaned rats a little longer and maybe mix in a small every 2-3 feedings. But if you're gonna keep him on smalls just space out your feedings a little more.