Riverrun (Poss Temp Name)

[Tsubaki]

If she is a mainland she is very small, Xena was sold to me as a 'mainland (mixed blood)', they admitted to have been maintenance feeding, 1 mouse every 2 weeks for a year. Being past 3,5 years she is now 12ft (Having a massive spurt currently, grew nearly 2ft in a matter of weeks), which is about the same as a average dwarf at that age, and she has been fed well.. So i really think she has a fairly large % of dwarf blood in her, suspect she will end up on the large end of of dwarf size unless she keeps this spurt up for a year... I found a picture of her where she was around riverruns age, she was quite similar in size to her at the same age, but she was already being fed adult rats(it looks like a big meal, but it went down and digested rapidly).



On this picture, Zuko is about 1,5 years old, Xena is 3,5. Zuko is 100% mainland. He is already half her weight, and only 3ft shorter (the picture does distort as he is closer to the camera).

[bigsnakegirl785]

Originally Posted by Tsubaki

If she is a mainland she is very small, Xena was sold to me as a 'mainland (mixed blood)', they admitted to have been maintenance feeding, 1 mouse every 2 weeks for a year. Being past 3,5 years she is now 12ft (Having a massive spurt currently, grew nearly 2ft in a matter of weeks), which is about the same as a average dwarf at that age, and she has been fed well.. So i really think she has a fairly large % of dwarf blood in her, suspect she will end up on the large end of of dwarf size unless she keeps this spurt up for a year... I found a picture of her where she was around riverruns age, she was quite similar in size to her at the same age, but she was already being fed adult rats(it looks like a big meal, but it went down and digested rapidly).



On this picture, Zuko is about 1,5 years old, Xena is 3,5. Zuko is 100% mainland. He is already half her weight, and only 3ft shorter (the picture does distort as he is closer to the camera).

Hmmm all this time I was told to feed retics 15-20% of their weight so that's what I've been doing. If I had known she could take bigger meals I may have went ahead and gotten her on medium rats instead of weaned in my last shipment. I may double her up for the next few months until I need to get my next shipment and buy her large rats then. Other than 1 single large rat (which is going to Cloud) and several 7-8 oz rabbits the biggest food I have are small rats. I could start giving her a small rat and a weaned rat a week, so I can use up the last of the weaned rats and let the small rats last a little longer.

She has been growing well, she grew about a foot in 5-6 months, it's just this little stop in her growth that has me worried, she really should have at least reached 5' by now if she had been growing this time because before her growth stopped it had been speeding up. Considering retics average 5'-6' at a year when not power-fed and not pushed too hard, I though that that kind of growth would have been normal, since she should have reached 5' only a few months after she turned 1? But if you consider 2' of growth in a few weeks to be dwarf growth then idk.

When I say my girth vs meal size is off I mean it. lol That meal you fed Xena in that photo looks like it's 2.5-3x her girth to me as opposed to 1.5x. :/

[bigsnakegirl785]

This is her next to the large rat, that came in at 276 grams, which is just over 60% of her weight. I'm not really sure if this is an acceptable meal for her just yet....Maybe I should go with mediums until she gets another foot on her?

Size-wise it doesn't look too bad I suppose, but weight wise that seems like a really heavy meal.



(She had just pooped in her tub, which is why it's bare. I used the opportunity of the clear, clean tub, to sorta kinda in a way keep her contained just long enough to snap a photo.)

[Tsubaki]

Don't exactly consider 2ft in some weeks Dwarf growth, but up to a few weeks Xena was pretty small even for a dwarf. She is now a more normal size for a 'mainland/dwarf' mix. I secretly wish she keeps this growth up and proves my expectations wrong! That rat is slightly big, she can take it, if shes not used to it i would up in a few steps though. Up to you ofcourse.

[bigsnakegirl785]

Well I went ahead and doubled up her feeding yesterday, I tried to keep them smallish because doubling up really worries me when I do it. She took the first rat ravenously, and the second one she didn't really seem too interested in, but ate it anyways. I think I'll space her feeding out closer to 10 days considering she had a big meal.

Once she goes through her small and weaned rats, I'll go ahead and order some medium and large rats for her, going off weight 15-20% mediums are closer to what she needs right now anyways. Hopefully she doesn't outgrow mediums by the time I order them, though. lol Maybe the bump in food will kickstart her length growth again.

The first rat was somewhere in between 1x and 1.5 times her girth, closer to 1x than 1.5x, not anything huge.





And then I also picked out the smallest weaned I could find.



Since I bumped her up to just one small, she hasn't had that "jump at whatever moves and hope it's food" habit she usually has, but she got it back after I doubled up, the poor hungry girl.

[Tsubaki]

Ooh that is such a bad habit haha, Zuko does it too... i walked past earlier and slammed his dumb face into the glass.. i hope she'll start growing noticeably again soon

[bigsnakegirl785]

Originally Posted by Tsubaki

Ooh that is such a bad habit haha, Zuko does it too... i walked past earlier and slammed his dumb face into the glass.. i hope she'll start growing noticeably again soon

lol She doesn't go so far as to strike at movement, but she does get all excited. You can see her pupils go from slits to big huge saucers, that tongue starts flicking, she starts breathing rapidly, and follows movement while inching closer to it. Fortunately, she seems to ask questions first before striking as she quickly calms down once she sees there's no food, although she'll still react to sudden movement. Once she knows there's no chance of food she kinda just looks down and either crawls off or sets her head down on the ground. From there, if I'm bringing her out I give her a rub or two with the hook and then grab her up. She seems to not need the hook cue, but I'm not gonna chance it once she's older, especially if she starts to strike first as she ages. haha

[bigsnakegirl785]

Looks like doubing up kickstarted her growth again!!! She's definitely grown some, and is about 1'-1.5' shorter than Cloud's enclosure (which is 6'), and bringing her up on SerpWidgets showed her to be 4'6". Could have sworn she'd reached 5' but 4.5' seems reasonable still. She also weighs 556 grams.

With this new kick in growth, she's become rather gangly again and lost a bit of that girth she was putting on. Still not skinny, but looks a bit deflated. haha

No pics as she shed yesterday and is about to eat.

[Tsubaki]

Woooo! Congrats!

[bigsnakegirl785]

I think now that she's finished off her weaned rats and is eating 2 small rats, I'm going to start spacing her feedings out again. I took her out today, and she's gotten girthy again after the past couple of meals, and seemed to get out of breath rather easily. I checked her mouth, and it's clear, no mucus or irritation, and she only makes noises when she's moving around. Instead of being constantly on the go without stop, she had to take multiple breaks and just sit there every few minutes, as if to catch her breath.

I think if I space her out and I can get my mom to help me put these cages together when she's got a day off, it will help her out a lot. She's long outgrown her tub, and doesn't have any way to climb atm. Even taking her out every day wouldn't really give her the exercise she needs, so I'm hoping my mom will help me put the cages together this Sunday when we get back from visiting my grandma and if I don't get called in to work.

I took some pics today, but I'm lazy and they're really crappy so I'll post them later. lol

[Tsubaki]

Most of my retics became a bit noisy as they grew bigger and also calmed down, a lot of giants do.

[bigsnakegirl785]

Originally Posted by Tsubaki

Most of my retics became a bit noisy as they grew bigger and also calmed down, a lot of giants do.

Oh yeah, I know they do, it's just that she's only 4.5' and on top of that she took multiple pit stops to rest, which she's never done before unless she was outside and smelled something. I didn't think retics started getting noisy until they got 7'-8' at least, if not bigger.

She hasn't really calmed down any at all, she's still busy and on the go. It's just one moment she'll be crawling around at Mach 5 and the next she'll just stop in mid-crawl and sit there breathing heavily for a few moments. No pupil dilation or reaction to movement so I don't think it's her spazzing out, then she'll shoot off again. Outside of the little breaks she took, she acted like she normally does.

If I don't space her out now, I will be spacing her out to 10-14 days when she turns 2 anyways. I just figured with how much food she's taking in, it wouldn't hurt to space her feedings out by a few days.

[bigsnakegirl785]

Weird I haven't put recent photos up here, coulda sworn I had!

So River has grown tons, she absolutely dwarves her size from November, not bad for going 2 months with zero growth.

She got her first medium rat today, but she won't be on mediums for long, maybe a couple of feedings. When she reaches 1,200 grams I'll be moving her up to larges since that will be when the smallest listed weight on Big Cheese will be 15% of her weight, and after that I'll be feeding her based off girth rather than weight. Either that, or wait until she reaches jumbo rats, not totally sure when you stop weight-based feedings with retics. Last weight I got on her was 733 grams, but she could easily have reached or exceeded 900 grams by now. When she's on large rats, I'll also start mixing in rabbits with her diet, my father gives me a pretty steady supply.

So her tub is really messy here because she peed and dumped her water, but this shows just how much she's grown. The heat panels are in, her EcoEarth and water dish is in place, now all I need to do is install the panels. Since I don't want the screws to go through the top of the enclosure, I'll be seeing if my mom's friend has some really short screws, otherwise we'll be stopping by Lowe's or something to pick some up. Then she'll be moved right in! (She's getting cramped in there.)

That little hide is more to try to keep her plant in place than anything now, because she does not fit in there anymore. I've got some new hides coming in the mail that should fit her for a few days before she outgrows them. :P



In shed, from end of January.



Eating her medium rat.

[Herpo]

She's beautiful, looks very charismatic!

[macandchz]

absolutely love the colors!