Riverrun (Poss Temp Name) - Page 5

bigsnakegirl785 · 09-29-15, 10:27 AM

Yeah I know that now. haha Now I give her a quick poke/rub when she stops and she'll flick her eyes forward and go back to crawling, she's way different than my other snakes on that department. I never heard mention of behavior like this before, but I'm glad I found out while she was still small! Are Burms the same way?

So far the move is going smoothly for us, I'm just waiting on my bed and the trailer has some simple fixes that need to be made, although there's several to do. I'm also getting ready to see if any of the snakes I've moved already are ready to eat now (it's been ~4 days now). The only snakes left to be moved now are Draco and Cloud, and it might be awhile for Cloud because we need a truck to move his enclosure; it won't fit in my mom's Jeep or my Blazer at all and I'd rather not tie it on top with the bridge we have to go under.

dave himself · 09-29-15, 01:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigsnakegirl785

Yeah I know that now. haha Now I give her a quick poke/rub when she stops and she'll flick her eyes forward and go back to crawling, she's way different than my other snakes on that department. I never heard mention of behavior like this before, but I'm glad I found out while she was still small! Are Burms the same way?

So far the move is going smoothly for us, I'm just waiting on my bed and the trailer has some simple fixes that need to be made, although there's several to do. I'm also getting ready to see if any of the snakes I've moved already are ready to eat now (it's been ~4 days now). The only snakes left to be moved now are Draco and Cloud, and it might be awhile for Cloud because we need a truck to move his enclosure; it won't fit in my mom's Jeep or my Blazer at all and I'd rather not tie it on top with the bridge we have to go under.

I've never really thought about this before, but the burms take off like rockets when they're on the floor but if they're lying about on the sofas, then they get defensive hissing pretty loudly and inflating themselves. But they calm down as soon as you pick any part of them up. Jenny just swings her head round gives ya the look of doom and carries on her merry way. And I know what you mean about trying to move a big viv at the moment I'm try to get Jenny's new viv to my house which to be honest is a pain in the butt

bigsnakegirl785 · 11-17-15, 07:05 AM

Riverrun now weighs about 440 grams, and has officially been moved to small rats, this is her second meal with a small rat. Still waiting on those PVC enclosures! If they don't come until spring, I may have to skip the 4'x2' entirely and put her straight into her 6'x2'. I want to wait until she's 5'-6' before I move her to the 6'x2' so she takes up more room in it.

Here's a pic from today's feeding.

Everybody got to be fed today because I'm a few days late on a few of their feedings due to sleeping the past 2 days away and everyone's due. The only ones not fed are Cloud and Bud, because Cloud still has 8 days before he's due and he's currently in shed, and Bud refused f/t. (Several are even rather early tbh, but I figured since so many were behind, I might as well feed everyone)

dave himself · 11-17-15, 01:34 PM

Congratulations on her moving up on to small rats

, she coming along nicely and looking well

**Tsubaki** · 11-17-15, 10:30 PM

Looking good

very pretty girl

bigsnakegirl785 · 11-18-15, 12:13 PM

Thanks everyone, she just keeps growing and growing like a young retic should.

With the increase in prey size, her growth rate should experience another burst, so she should catch up quickly to where she needs to be. Haven't got a recent length on her, due to her not enjoying the concept of "sit still for 2 seconds so I can take a crummy pic for SerpWidgets" and how uncomfortable being on the ground can make her.

bigsnakegirl785 · 11-20-15, 06:06 PM

Despite all this weight she's gaining she doesn't seem to be growing much at all in length, most of her weight seems to be going to thickness now. :/ Measuring her on SerpWidgets shows she hasn't grown an inch since I measured her in September, and she definitely doesn't look it in person either, which is why I brought her up on SW in the first place. This seems weird to me because I have both bumped up her food size and upped her feeding frequency to every 7-10 days in the past 2 months.

Over the ~7 months I've had her she's grown pretty much 6" every 2-3 months and now her growth has stopped.

The photo I used to measure her with.

Is it possible she's getting ready hit a huge growth spurt or something? At a year old I'd expect her to still be growing rapidly, but do retics grow in spurts rather than steadily during this time? Or could her being underfed by her breeders/owners have stunted her even worse than I thought?

**Tsubaki** · 11-21-15, 05:27 AM

Not to nag, but if that last feeding picture is what she's been eating after she went up in size.. You might want to up it again, i feed my growing retics prey that are 1,5times thicker than their thickets part. At a year they can easily eat large rats, they can even take bigger. They do grow in spurts but they dont stop like that in my experience.

bigsnakegirl785 · 11-21-15, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tsubaki

Not to nag, but if that last feeding picture is what she's been eating after she went up in size.. You might want to up it again, i feed my growing retics prey that are 1,5times thicker than their thickets part. At a year they can easily eat large rats, they can even take bigger. They do grow in spurts but they dont stop like that in my experience.

I'm feeding her based off of weight, 15-20%, then I find the size that falls within that and then I don't worry about the size, so she gets a variety of rat weights. It's also possible I grabbed a weaned rat instead of a small, the last time my fridge failed I had to dump all my rats/mice into the shipping box's dry ice, so I had to guess what was what when putting them back in their bags. They were thawing out when I left them in their respective bags. :/ I can go and weigh all the mid-sized rats I have and separate all the biggest ones, I didn't think it would make that big of a difference for her to get slightly smaller rats every once in awhile.

I did discuss in another post in this thread her previous owners were feeding her fuzzy mice every 2 weeks when she should have been eating rat pups, and I got her when she was already 6 months old, so she's a bit behind in growth. She's right around 4' right now, when she should be 5'-6'.

**Tsubaki** · 11-21-15, 03:30 PM

I never weigh my prey, i just look for a fitting sized prey on sight and it has always worked wonders. At least the same size as their girth, but i prefer about 1,5. I'm thinking we're never going to agree on this subject, as i have already told you before in my opinion this animal was getting small meals. I'll accept that, to each their own, she looks fine. However your worries about her growth does makes me feel like wanting to repeat my previous statement. Xena was fed one mouse every 2 weeks for a year by the breeder (maintenance fed), and she was only slightly smaller at a year old than your girl is. She grew fairly slowly even after picking up the feeding pace, only now she is finally getting a decent spurt at 3,5 years old and that is with larger sized prey. Just to get an idea for myself i calculated the rabbit Xena had a few days ago. It was around 35% of her weight, the bulge was gone in 2 days and she ate it with greatest ease. I have raised a lot of retics, i never had a single fat or badly proportioned one. I feed my burmese carefully, my boa's even more so.. But retics, they fair well on large prey is my experience.. I fed my newborn dwarfs weanling rats, never had one that needed to eat mice (Perhaps SD newborns, i have not kept young SD's).

Again not looking to argue, do as you please with this info.

bigsnakegirl785 · 11-21-15, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tsubaki

I never weigh my prey, i just look for a fitting sized prey on sight and it has always worked wonders. At least the same size as their girth, but i prefer about 1,5. I'm thinking we're never going to agree on this subject, as i have already told you before in my opinion this animal was getting small meals. I'll accept that, to each their own, she looks fine. However your worries about her growth does makes me feel like wanting to repeat my previous statement. Xena was fed one mouse every 2 weeks for a year by the breeder (maintenance fed), and she was only slightly smaller at a year old than your girl is. She grew fairly slowly even after picking up the feeding pace, only now she is finally getting a decent spurt at 3,5 years old and that is with larger sized prey. Just to get an idea for myself i calculated the rabbit Xena had a few days ago. It was around 35% of her weight, the bulge was gone in 2 days and she ate it with greatest ease. I have raised a lot of retics, i never had a single fat or badly proportioned one. I feed my burmese carefully, my boa's even more so.. But retics, they fair well on large prey is my experience.. I fed my newborn dwarfs weanling rats, never had one that needed to eat mice (Perhaps SD newborns, i have not kept young SD's).

Again not looking to argue, do as you please with this info.

I mean the meals leave like a football-sized bulge in her, I'm really terrible at guessing meal size vs. girth, which is why I'm using the weight method. She was growing rapidly before, if she was growing the same way she has been, she'd easily be 5' by now, but for some reason she hasn't grown any in 2 months, so that's 6"+ of length lost. :/ The next size up I have right now is one large rat, and that's going to be my adult BCI's last meal before I fast him, so she can't have it. lol I'd hate to feed multiples, but I may have to idk.

And you did bring this up before? I don't remember this, hmm.

She is steadily gaining weight, on average 40-50 grams every couple of weeks, but none of it is going to length, all of it is going to girth. If she's getting enough food to get wider and wider, shouldn't she be getting longer, too? I'm just really confused by it.

**Tsubaki** · 11-22-15, 06:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tsubaki

Fuzzy mice are way to small for this snake, even as a small meal. Even adult mice would be too small.

As long as she is growing she should be fine, it is a bit of weird age to be only gaining width. But they do switch a bit between length/girth growth. If it leaves such a big bulge it's probably fine. I wouldn't worry about it and just enjoy this beautiful girl

bigsnakegirl785 · 11-22-15, 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tsubaki

As long as she is growing she should be fine, it is a bit of weird age to be only gaining width. But they do switch a bit between length/girth growth. If it leaves such a big bulge it's probably fine. I wouldn't worry about it and just enjoy this beautiful girl

Oh, that was literally one meal, to hold her over until my rodent shipment came in, since I didn't have rat pups on hand. I had no intentions in continuing to feed her those, and her very next meal was a rat pup. I was mainly thinking that the meal size of two fuzzies was equivalent to what she'd be getting with rats, not trying to argue a point to continue feeding them to her. Same when I was discussing the jumbo mice, they were't regular meals by any means, and she's only gotten rats since.

Yeah that's what I thought, too. I was expecting her to be 2-3 years and at least 10' before I started seeing this kind of growth, from what I've heard, but maybe in the next couple of months she'll explode in length to make up for it. lol

**Tsubaki** · 11-22-15, 10:05 AM

She is a dwarf right?

bigsnakegirl785 · 11-22-15, 05:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tsubaki

She is a dwarf right?

As far as I know, no. She was sold to me as a standard-sized mainland and as far as I know she looks like one, I assume she has no dwarf or SD blood because they did say explicitly she was mainland.