Newb Questions

[spock]

Hi,

I obtained a female red tale on an impulse buy (roughly 3 foot long at the time), and must admit I am really starting to enjoy looking after her. I have a few questions though - I've spent a lot of time on the web reading up, but I haven't really found satisfactory answers.

Caging:
I'm about to upgrade my aquarium style encolsure to a proper one which I will be building. What I want to be sure of is the size. Everyone recommends 6'x24"x24" as the proper size. My question is whether or not it would be overkill to increase that size, say to 6'x3'x24", for example. I am putting a lot of effort into this and want my boa to have ample room. Lavish. Lap of luxury and all that..

Feeding:
A simple question here. How do you kill a rabbit before feeding it to your boa? I assume you don't swing it by the foot and bash its head??? hehe... My boa is still on live food, but I am busy crossing this divide, which is easy enough with rats. Hence, do any of you have your own CO2 chambers? I am having difficulty obtaining info on this. I live in South Africa, and at the moment its difficult to find a place that will ship me frozen, pre-killed food.

Eventhough the web has pretty much most of the answers to anyone's questions, I think the true answers lie with those with the hands on experience. Any help is appreciated.

S.

[Randy_T.]

Well what I do/did to prekill rabbits is I would knock them in the back of the head with a dowel rod (or smaller broom stick) and after they are unconscious I twist the head and pop the spine in the neck (yeah I know it is a bit mean sounding but this is the technique 90% of the commercial rabbit breeders I have talked with and watched use when killing off a large amount of rabbits)

Later

[Randy_T.]

Oh, and for the enclosure I think a 6' X 3' X 2' is just fine for an adult bci or bcc female (I keep my large 8'+ female in a 6X2X2 and another 1' deeper wouldn't hurt her in anyway)

[goofykid87]

3 ft long? rabbits? maybe i missed sumthing. but as far as the co2 chamber, dont feed right after gassing, ive read somewhere that the extra co2 gas inside of the rodent is bad for the boa, so gas, freeze, leave for a week, thaw, feed. and for making the co2 chamber... buy a big a really big tupperwear container with a good, solid lid. and get asmaller tupperwear container and drill holes in the lid of the smaller one. then, put the dry ice in the smaller container with the small lid on. put the small container inside the big container, put the rabbit/rat/annoying nieghbors in the large container, and snap on the lid. :'(

[diablo]

Well 3ft and eating rabbits....Ummm the prey size needs to be a tad bit bigger then the girth of the snake.

Randy you are so mean! you love the sound of the bones popping ! ;D

As for the cage " the bigger the better "!

[spock]

Woah hey no, 3 ft long "at the time", almost 5 now, but still nowhere near rabbit sized - I was merely curious about that!!

Randy, your method is straight forward and simple, I agree, but I don't think my 3 yr old daughter will be too happy with her pop after he cracks the skull on Bambi's furry friend! "Wook at the wittle fuwwy wabbit...CRACK! eeeep"

That's why I think it would be better (for my well-being) to use the CO2 thingy - thanks goofy. Now if I can only find a source for dry ice..

I just fed my boa her last live rat - the rat was a big one, and managed to get one of its rear claws into a position to dig into the skin. He even drew blood, which made up my mind to avoid that danger in future.

[Randy_T.]

Most of the super wal marts (around here atleast) sell dry ice, so check them out and see if your local wally world carries it.

Or if you have a paintball gun supply store near you, they carry the CO2 tanks.

Good luck with the chamber.(and I agree the popping the neck is a bit mean, and I need to make a new BIG!!! chamber just for bunnies.)

[diablo]

"Or if you have a paintball gun "


I read that and thought you where going to say shoot them! ;D

[goofykid87]

durring your next feeding, kill the rat first, grab it by the tail with pliers, and wiggle it like crazy and the snake should eat it. Live are bad for the snake as you have just seen :'(

[Toymaker]

Thawed out frozens are better yet as the freezing will kill any parasites that might be in you rodents.