Belated Baby Boa Birth

[Cmpyrrhus]

This morning was like any other. I woke up at 4 am to get ready for work, got to work at 5 am. Although today I had to leave at lunch to take my lady to see a doctor, it was pretty much routine.

Anyhoo, we go to the doc, pic up her prescription, grabbed some lunch and came home. I went in to clean a cage and to feed the Iggy, when I took a look into one of my boa cages.

"Good Lord, thats a huge crap!" I am thinking. Little did I expect to see boas squirmin' around. I was pretty darn excited. :D

"Hey hun! The boa had her babies!" I yell to my girlfriend from the herp room. "She had her babies".

Thing is, my boas mated back in two weeks time way back in Mid-October, so it has been a good 8 months since. I gave up a couple months on any babies for the most part this year. I also thought I had 2 males and one female, but turned out I had 2 females and 1 male (Now I know why the one male was mating the other, eh). This "male" was probbed as well, go figure... So the female I thought was gravid I suppose is not, but maybe more luck? Saturday was my birthday as well, so it is my own belated birthday gift to myself... :)

I ended up with 9 live, 2 stillborn and 2 slugs, aint to shabby for a first litter and not expecting anything.

To the pics -

I took a quick pic of one that I really liked. All of them are pretty dark in coloration, with some having some of the fading on the sides like daddy. Mom is a really dark boa, which I like.

[Cmpyrrhus]

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[HERPSKEEPER]

Congrats on the babys:ant: :BLOB: :hi :D

[snake-hunter]

wow nice boas!!!! i love the striping alot of them show! are they pure columbians? will you be selling any?

[Loteer]

:eek: :eek: :eek: CoNgOrAtS they look great:)

[Confederado]

Sounds like you kept her at a rather cooler temp than is optimum for BC and this explains some of the striping seen. Some breeders of BC I use to know would keep certain females at lower temps during the gestation period to produce striped babies. Unfortunately, they found that such "stripers" are not genetic, per se, and the trait will not be passed on to the offspring. Just curious at what average temperature you kept momma snake at?
Kevin

[Cmpyrrhus]

I removed the young after those quick pics I took and seperated them from the mommy. She was kept in a 4 X 2 cage with a heat of around 95°-100° and the ambient temp around 80°-83° and at 75° at night (what my herp room averages out at).

The mommy was one I was told (as it was probbed out) to be male. Its cage had tweeked rather bad one day back in October when I moved the cage, so I placed it with the other male while I quickly fixed it. thats when I noticed the 'platonic' love making. Apparently it was female...:confused:

But anyhow, this snake would never use the heat very much, except when it was digesting prey. Then again I never knew it was female or gravid for that matter.

My other female blew up like crazy, and mated and was pretty fat for the longest time. I never got anything from her, as of yet. Still has a bit of girth on her still. She was given the same temps and was always using the heat pad, coiled up over it. (pad is under the cage) Now I am wondering what ever came about that...darn boas drive me crazy.

But back to the babies....

When I went back a while longer, I looked the babies over and found 3 to have a kink tail after the cloaca and a couple with some undeveloped nostril areas on the nose. I am a bit stumped on this lil' bit of oddity...I would assume this to happen if temps were kept really low for some time. A friend of mine had the same problem with the length of gravidness, one of his boas went on for just over 6 months. His neonates came out very nice, large litter and no apparent health problems. All of his young are living fine a doing well as of today.

The lil' ones are all doing fine as of today, beginning to shed and pretty active. To me, I would assume, they would be able to live a perfect life but they just have a bit of obvious physical problems. I would not suggest they be used for breeding, but I do feel they will make fine pets regardless.

[BillBall]

wow those are good looking snakes....You gonna part with any of them? If so how much you gonna want? Thanks and Congrats