My "little" experiment........:-)

[Jeff_Favelle]

Well, I'm always one to try new things, so I decided a few years ago to conduct a little experiment with my Rainbows. Everyone always says that breeding boas too early and "power-feeding them" and accelerating their growth, etc etc etc is bad, bla bla bla......

So I decided to try something. Mind you, its not a closed experiment, and it won't really tell me much, but it'll be fun anyways. This "little" Rainbow is 4 years old now. I didn't breed her and I didn't gun her to breeding size in 18 months (like I have done with ALL my Rainbows). Instead, I fed her slowly and I never cycled her and I kept her seperate from all the other Rainbows. Well, she is now 4 years old and, I am not joking, closing in on 7.5 feet!! She is a MONSTER! I never paid much attention to her other than to feed once in a while, change the newspaper, and give fresh water. Well I was rerranging eveything for winter cycling (Nov. 15th folks!!!) and I pulled her out and I could barely lift her! HUGE is an understatement!

So it'll be neat to see what she does, this her first year of breeding. :D She's just gone out of the blue and is now clear and should shed tonight. That explains the absence of the moons. But look at that RED!!!!!!! .

I LUV Rainbows!

http://members.shaw.ca/galleryb/RF4_newest.jpg

[maiden_canada]

HOLY SH*T!! that's the reddest BRB i've ever seen!

Goodluck with youre breeding project
Clarke

[cpt_retic]

Thats one he!! of a big brb. Nice work Jeff

[ohh_kristina]

very, very nice! It's hard to imagine that my little girl could get that big :D

[Invictus]

Incredible Jeff!!! So I guess "slow and steady wins the race" definitely applies here. I've never even heard of a 7.5 foot rainbow boa. That's great! Maybe you and I can both enter the record books. (I have an E. c. maurus that is 5'8". Columbians usually don't get that big either. :) It's no 7.5 feet, but I'm still impressed, hehehe)

[Clownfishie]

She's MASSIVE Jeff! Holy crap! LOL... Bet she'll pop out a tonne of babies for you next year -- and if they're anywhere near as red as she is, they're going to kick ***! :D

[Ryan and Katie]

Wow, that is impressive. She's gorgeous!

[HetForHuman]

WOW thats a nice speciman.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Heh heh a 5'-8" Colombian is HUGE man! They are always stockier than Brazilians too! I love them!

Incredible Jeff!!! So I guess "slow and steady wins the race" definitely applies here.

Ha ha, I'm not sure about that. As I said, it remains to be seen what happens this season. What if she slugs out? What conclusions will be drawn then? But, again, its just one season and one snake. Hardly concrete data! LOL!

[Jeff_Favelle]

Bet she'll pop out a tonne of babies for you next year -- and if they're anywhere near as red as she is, they're going to kick ***!

I agree Jen! There's a TON of cool Rainbows floating around in Canada, not just mine! Sooo many people have soo many nice specimens, its really a buyer's market! I'm just happy to be part of the game, and I take my hat off to all the other breeders that have chosen to work with them! You know who you are!

[SerpentLust]

That is the most amazing BRB!

Jenn

[Linds]

Insane!! :eek:

[boasnpythons03]

Very nice BRB!!! :eek:

Your too lucky jeff!

[Simon]

holly~
that is one huge brb
why does all the huge snakes have small names...tiny, baby, now little...hahahh

they're huge!!!

[foman]

Wow Jeff she looks incredible. Goodluck with her.

[PoiSoNouS]

oh wow shes awesome !!!

[maiden_canada]

hey jeff did you already breed her? you better save me one of her babies

[crazyboy]

awesome

[Scales Zoo]

That's funny, this year we are doing the exact opposite thing you are.

We usually like to grow our snakes up much slower than most people, and we tend to wait until the female is really big before attempting breeding. We feel this will lead to a longer life for the pair - and that is more our goals.

But this year, we got a salmon boa male from Simon. It was already really large for it's age - so we've kept throwing large amounts of food at it - and it accepts it all of the time.

Am I doing this because I am greedy. Absolutely!

I think a cool experiment would be to only breed your big female every 2nd year, and see what snakes produce more babies over an entire lifetime. I know people that have snakes that are 20 years old (not colubrids) and still breeding like clockwork.

Cool snake, I'd love to see a really big brazillian.

Ryan

[geckoguy157]

note to self steal jeffs brb's lol just kiddin looks great i wouldnt getting myself one of those

[burmer]

She looks incredible and is a monster. I hope my female grows to be half as nice. Congrats and great pic.

[CDN-Cresties]

Awesome looking BRB.

-Steve-

[Dani33]

STUNNING!!!!!

[Bartman]

a BIGGY..and the red on that blinds me!! Good good good luck on your breeding project, i wanna see the babies that come out of her :)

[Tim_Cranwill]

Wicked boa! It's nice to see some experimentation going on...

Good luck Favelle... oh, wait... You ALREADY have good luck, you punk! ;)

[emroul]

Good luck, man that "little" girl shoud produce some KILLER babies! Hold a couple for me, will ya? :D

She is one AWESOME looker!

-Jennifer

[Jeff_Favelle]

That's funny, this year we are doing the exact opposite thing you are.

We usually like to grow our snakes up much slower than most people, and we tend to wait until the female is really big before attempting breeding. We feel this will lead to a longer life for the pair - and that is more our goals.



LOL, how can that be the exact opposite of what I've done if that was precisely what my post said I was doing??? LOL!! :confused:


But I don't think its correct to think that way. Hence the reason I'm trying it. To disprove it. Reptiles, as ectothermic animals, were designed to eat and grow and reproduce. Caloric intake = breeding success. I don't think it bears any weight (pun intended) on long-term health. I live for the here and now, not for the future. What if you try to grow an animal to breed in its 5th year and it dies for some reason at age 4?? How many babies will you get then? Exactly zero! But if I bred it at age 1.5 then I would get 3 litters of 20, so that's 60 babies. In terms of my operation, and in terms of evolution/the snake's natural history, that's more of a success than not breeding at all.

I don't rely on what could happen, I rely on what is happening and what I can facilitate to happen.

[Jeff_Favelle]

Good luck Favelle... oh, wait... You ALREADY have good luck, you punk!

If you are referring to my Roughriders Tim, that is not luck. It is Destiny.


:p

[Jeff_Favelle]

I think a cool experiment would be to only breed your big female every 2nd year, and see what snakes produce more babies over an entire lifetime. I know people that have snakes that are 20 years old (not colubrids) and still breeding like clockwork.

Funny you should say that, I have a female that's over 15 years old and last year was her 3rd clutch in a row @ 20+ babies every year, with this year being the biggest at 26 babies!

And I also have a male over 20 years old. And he was the father to a litter this year, and 2 litters last year! Feeding snakes does not shorten their lifespans, LOL! Not feeding them does! :D

[Scales Zoo]

Originally posted by Jeff_Favelle
[B]LOL, how can that be the exact opposite of what I've done if that was precisely what my post said I was doing??? LOL!! :confused:

Keep reading my post Jeff and you will see that I said that is what we normally do (grow a snake up slower than most people, and breed when the snake is large), but this year we decided to grow a snake up really quickly and breed at a young age.

Where as you normally [i]gun her to breeding size in 18 months (like I have done with ALL my Rainbows). Instead, I fed her slowly and I never cycled her...

I think that is opposite. LOL :)

Now, for the other things you brought up.

You see, I am still of the belief that a snake that is "gunned" to breeding age at 18 months, and the cycled and bred each year, will not live really long. I may or may not be correct in my belief, but I don't know of any old snakes that bred from a very young age, and then did so each year. You might, and if you do, I'd be interested in hearing about them.

I've always thought that overfeeding a snake was detrimental to long term health. But, like you said, so is underfeeding. However, we aim for a balance somewhere inbetween the 2 extremes.

But our goal (usually) isn't to grow the snake really quickly, to get as many babies as we can as quickly as possible. Many of our snakes mean a lot to us in a "pet" sense - and we want to keep them around as long as possible, regardless of how many babies we get, or how quickly we can have babies.

I think in the wild, as snakes evolved, snakes eat as much as they can and grow as quickly as they can - to reproduce as much as they can, to make more babies, which is the long term goal in the wild. Having said that, I don't think any ball pythons find enough food to breed at 18 months in the wild, but I have not studied that, hence the "I don't think".

I've got a paper somewhere, which I will look for, with necropsy reports of captive snakes in a breeding program, of snakes dieing at a young age because of fatty organ troubles. They attributed this to feeding too often, an not letting the gut empty completely for a few days which they said was needed for certain organs

I'm just answering the points you brought up, don't think I'm trying to debate the issue - just tossing a few ideas around.

If we don't ask we don't learn!

Ryan

[Jeff_Favelle]

I've always thought that overfeeding a snake was detrimental to long term health

I agree that it is detrimental too! Of course it is, or it wouldn't be called "overfeeding"!!!


But I think we differ on the term "overfeeding though"

[Scales Zoo]

Are you making fun of me because I'm fat?

[maiden_canada]

Originally posted by Scales Zoo
Are you making fun of me because I'm fat?

LOL, are you gonna take that scaleszoo?

[Jeff_Favelle]

LOL, you're not fat! You're festively plump!

[Jungle Jen]

Yet another amazing animal you have there Jeff!

[Sean_.E.]

:eek: AWESOME! Good luck with her!

[Jeff_Favelle]

Thanx guys! You rock!

[HetForHuman]

Originally posted by Jeff_Favelle
LOL, you're not fat! You're festively plump!

LMAO Jeff, you do indeed come up with some good lines..lol

And if you have some babies that will be like that when they are adults i will deffinitely be getting a couple from you. That snake rocks dude.

[Vanan]

I for one would like to see Jeff's eyes pop out when she pops a ton of babies. Might make you a believer then, eh Jeff? ;)

[JaredAren]

I am surprised to hear you bred brb at 18 months. That's outstanding! All the care sheets say they need to be a minimum of 2.5 years and every American breeder I have spoken to has stated this. I disagreed but did not have any type of proof that they could breed at 18 months. I have a pair in cooling right now that are 18 months old. The male is 4.5 feet and the female is 5 feet. After reading your post I am confident that they will breed. I don't have a recent pic but here is one from when she was one year old and 4ft.

http://showcase.netins.net/web/reptiles/stuff/fbrb4big.JPG

[dr greenlove]

Hello, i would just like to ask what sort of feeding regimen would be required to obtain a year old BRB that is 4 foot long?

My own is (almost) a year old, and despite lotsa food she isn't anywhere near the 4 foot mark.


Oh and lovely snake mate!:)

[Jeff_Favelle]

Hello, i would just like to ask what sort of feeding regimen would be required to obtain a year old BRB that is 4 foot long?

48 inches is nothing after a year. Could be genetics though. Snakes are like people. Some are small, some are large, and some are medium. You have ONE snake, so your sample size is not exactly huge. I have had hundreds of Rainbows pass through my hands, and the norm for me as been that Rainbows can get 3-5 feet after 10-14 months if started on good-sized food items, with access to both 88F and 80F and high humidity. Just the way it is.

Exercise is a must when feeding this much though. People say "over feeding is bad, over feeding is bad, bla bla bla", but they don't really give the snake the right conditions. Over-feeding can happen at ANY amount, if the snake has bad temperatures, bad cage setups, and little exercise. I'm surprised these reptilian friends of ours live in some of the conditions I've seen.

[Vanan]

Exercise is a must when feeding this much though.

Aha! Now we know! You see man, if you tell people that you can do it, if it's done right, then it wouldn't be so bad. Instead of having people keep their snakes in too small of an enclosure, not taking them out and powerfeeding them like crazy. I guess it's kinda like athlete's training, eat a lot and burn alot.

Although, I wonder if the internal growth would be affected. Cos you know how the concern is that, when bred too young, the inside organs may not have fully developed and thus you have problems such as egg-binding. Wonder if there's a way to overcome that.

[eyespy]

Egg-binding is more of a problem of low serum calcium in most cases than it is of the eggs getting "stuck". The reproductive tract is made from highly elastic tissue which can usually stretch itself around even very large eggs. Fully calcified bones will shed off cells which are very calcium-rich when the body needs an extra burst of calcium circulating. The muscles take that calcium and use it as an electricity conductor to receive and proces nervous system impulses. Laying eggs uses up huge amounts of the electrolytes, including calcium. The normal amount of calcium circulating in the bloodstream is used up pretty fast so the body has to take reserves from the bones to continue the process.

Immature females don't have the calcium stores in their bones to fuel the heavy-duty muscle activity involved in laying and so the eggs get stuck not because they are too large to pass, but because the muscles aren't getting enough coordinated nerve signals from the brain.

Nothing but time really helps that, as long as a female is in a rapid growth phase her bones will not be fully calcified as there is too high a ratio of soft new cells that are still absorbing calcium from the bloodstream to mature ones that have some spare minerals to replenish the blood. So even if her eggs are easily small enough to pass through her oviduct, there is an increased potential for eggbinding.

[Vanan]

Thanks eyespy! :) Explains it alot better!