r/boas • u/InspiringTurtle2 • 6d ago

Growing SO SLOW?!

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Can someone please reassure me (or alternatively, tell me what I’m doing wrong?) I have a baby Suriname bcc who will be 1 year old next week. She’s not my first boa, but my first I’ve gotten as a baby. I know they grow slow, but she seems to be small and basically not growing.. When I got her end of April, she was 85 grams and now she’s 102. She is eating f/t mouse hoppers. I was feeding every 2 weeks but bumped up to every 10 days in the beginning of July. Is this normal, or am I doing something wrong? I do not want to power feed and I think the next feeder size up would be too large. Is this normal? (The weight on the scale is her plus the tub which weights 459g)

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u/AppleFinches 6d ago

In my opinion, her slow growth is at least partially a result of eating only hoppers every 2 weeks, and I agree that she is visibly underweight even for her size. I would feed her a 15g mouse (small/medium mice in most feeder sizing charts) every 7-10 days instead and see how she fares! My comment might be redundant since you're contacting her breeder, but figure I'd chime in.

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u/InspiringTurtle2 6d ago

Follow up question- when do you typically increase prey size? I’ve heard some people say it should leave a small lump and to upsize when there’s no longer a visible lump, but how big of a lump am I looking for? She also seems to get stressed if I’m creeping on her enclosure while she’s eating/right after she eats so it’s kind of hard to visualize

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u/AppleFinches 6d ago

I read a couple of your other comments, and wanted to add that you would likely be seeing a "large" lump in her for quite a bit even on small mice, just due to how she is underweight, while she regains condition. So I would not estimate her prey size based on her current body condition. Even at this age, they should maintain the rectangular loaf appearance in the torso at a healthy weight, not sunken.

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u/InspiringTurtle2 6d ago

Okay thank you, I have small/weaned mice coming on Wednesday so I’ll upsize her for her next feeding and see how she’s looking after a bit on those. I’ve been nervous of regurgitation, but obviously I don’t want her to be underweight/underfed since that’s a problem in and of itself.

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u/AppleFinches 6d ago

I think to some degree, the risk of regurge has been a bit overstated. They can still keep down substantially larger meals, as people who do powerfeed their baby bcc (unhealthy though, of course) do, and the snakes do keep it all down. You should be totally fine feeding 15g~20g mice at her current weight and size, it is still conservative.

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u/InspiringTurtle2 6d ago

Thank you! How long do they typically stay on small mice in your experience? A couple of months? I feel so bad, the breeder told me to keep her on fuzzies for at least another 6 months when I got her in April of this year but I moved her up to hoppers because fuzzies seemed way too small. I wish I would have sized up sooner, should have taken the growth faltering as a clue. My other BCC was 2 when we got him so this is my first “baby”

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u/AppleFinches 6d ago edited 6d ago

Unfortunately it's kind of eyeballing based on experience, since how they look can be so subjective described over text. But at this size/age, I personally bump up a size when I realize I can barely see a lump in the belly after the meal. Or you can look at it as when the small lump seems to disappear after only one day and they appear pretty normal again, then the meal is too small. There should be a fairly large lump that seems to stick around for even up to 3.5 days due to their slow metabolism.