Giant Afrock Pics

[reticguy]

This girl was imported in 1990 and is currently around 19-20' (hard to measure a big, ornery girl like this). She weighs in over 200 lbs (209 lbs last time I borrowed a shipping scale from work). Her head is nearly the size of my foot, her neck at the base of her head is as thick as my bicept.

This girl produced a clutch of 80 eggs a couple yrs ago that she maternally incubated (like I had any choice in the matter) with 100% hatch rate! The hatchlings were over 30% larger in mass than what is typical for the species. Monster female = monster eggs = monster hatchlings!

This girl feeds on XL rabbits (2nd pic is of her swallowing a 10-12 lb rabbit), piglets, full size goats and lamb, basically any farm animal up to 60 lbs. She consumed over 150 lbs of food over 3 feedings in the month of August before she bred to produce that clutch of 80 eggs.

Nathan

http://ssnakess.com/photopost/data/500/2118big_rock1.jpg

http://ssnakess.com/photopost/data/500/2118afrock_feeding.jpg

[Bearded AL]

OMG she is huge but very nice!! AL

[alex_33]

Beautiful snake and 80 EGGS?!?!? thats a heck of a lot of eggs

[Edwin]

Wow, that rock ROCKS!

[reticguy]

Yes - a heck of a lot of eggs to have ALL hatch - LOL. This one clutch quickly turned into a part-time job in of itself (feeding, cleaning, watering, etc).

Nathan

[asphyxia]

Thanks for the Pic...very cool and as close as i want to get to that eating machine lol

Cheers
Brian

[PoiSoNouS]

Shes HUGE ! beautiful lady :)

[burmer]

Very impressive. She is a monster.

[Blackwidow69]

:cool: Oooh dude she is one big mama!!! thats alot of babies to deal with, wow... cool pic...:cool:

[Weather1]

A real beauty... You are so lucky

[Scales Zoo]

She is a gorgeous snake. I wish I had one of those big babies from the clutch of 80.

Oh wait, I do - haha.

Queen is now 12' long and ~50 lbs (before eating). She eats 10 lb rabbits faster than our 15' burm (~120 lbs) and about the same speed as our 20' retic (~170 lbs).

I'd love to videotape that snake eating a 50 lb goat.

Ryan and Sheila

[RachelS.]

WOW, that thing is nice!!! It looks dark in the pics... I like it!!!

[ReptiZone]

Do you still bread her man this is the what 3rd or 4th thread so far and you amase me every time do you have a pic of you and that monster together or dos her temperment prevent that kind of quality time spent every month. Cause that pic would be a sight not every day you come across these animals

[dm101081]

Did you have any problems with babies being crushed after they hatched.

[reticguy]

Amazingly enough, no problem whatsoever with hatchlings being crushed. I'll try to find some pics of the hatchlings pipping with mother still partially wrapped around the clutch (at work right now - so very limited supply of pics here).

I don't have any pics of me handling her because frankly, that never happens. She is too damn aggressive for that. Last time I took her to a reptile show, I had 2 others assist with restraining and bagging her. During the restraining process, she "bucked" us off of her and followed through with smashing the mid section of her body right through the sliding glass doors on her cage (1/4" = 6 mm glass)! It was an amazing sight - she reared up her mid section (kinda looked like she was imitating a camel) and hurled it at as, who had just closed the sliding glass doors on her cage and thought we were safe behind the "shield" of glass. Not so.

Also had her lunge out of her cage as fast as a hyper hatchling retic one time. Surprised the hell out of me. Never seen her move so quick! She went right to the exit of my snake room, blocking my escape and turned to face me. Nice. Real nice. It's a good thing that my feeding tongs were in reach and I've used these so extensively over the years that they're like a 2nd arm to me. I was luckily able to steer her strikes to the side of me, but when she started to move toward her cage, I gently lifted the mid section of her body to help coax her head through the opening, only to have her respond with a surprisingly accurate 180-degree strike back at me. Narrowly missed my head (could feel the brush of wind). Not good. I still shudder to think how close I came to serious injury during that event.

Nathan

[skin78]

WOW!!!!! She really is a beauty.. You can be very proud of that snake... I hope mine also grows up to 20' :) BUt she has a long way to go :)

[ReptiZone]

you should post that reply under the snake eye thred caus we had a debat about how many ppl it would take to restraind and retic or any larg constrictor for that matter and some one was saying that 3 ppl was enugh and I was saying that 3 ppl would be in serious pain at the end of the day. read the thread and you will see

[Scales Zoo]

Chondro

We had a 22' - 220 lb male makasar retic make a shocking jail break in the days after we first got it home. Sheila, I, and my strongest friend entered the room to move it to it's new home.

20 minutes later, snake bagged and ready for transport, after much sweating and swearing - we all decided that that was a 5 person job.

I'd suggest adding 1 or 2 people (to the 5 people required) for an eyecap job.

That snake really "opened my eyes" to the strength that they are capable of exerting. I totally underestimated it's strength. (We had 650 lbs of people being moved around the room)

Even our tame 20' female (tame by makasar sulawesi standards)
can toss me around like a bean bag (I'm 240 lbs) when she decides to change directions while out for cage cleaning.

At least she has never offered to bite (got a few funny stories to the contrary regarding the larger male)

Ryan

[ReptiZone]

Did you read the snake eye thred it is kinda funny. Man I would have loved to be with you on the day that is a wrestling match you dont see every day and is well worth the fight in the end.

[Emily-Fisher]

Checkout his size man! Jeepers! And I was starting to think that my 3 foot corn was big!! :p

[Dom]

WOW .. I can't even begin to tell u how beautiful she is..

ID LOVE TO SEE MORE PICS OF HER!!!

My two rocks are just babies but I am waiting for them to grow! lol My largest is now eating 4-5 pound rabbits.. a good 9 + feet.. and aggressive as can be..

More pics man!

[Xetox]

.....as of yet I have not had to deal with real aggressive large ones....but seems like I don't want to either without about 4 guys to back me up...

Great post and beautiful snake!