Feeding

How does the snake eat?

If you open the mouth of your beloved boa and take a look inside (which should be done every now and then), you will notice fine teeth that are certainly not suitable for chewing prey.

The teeth of boas serve the purpose of detaining prey and to keep it from escaping.

Boa constrictor sits in a hide spot or on a branch, and waits for a careless prey animal that enters its reach. The snake then strikes with lightning speed, (ideally) grabbing its victim by the head, coiling it, and using an incredible amount of strength to subdue it.

The pressure makes it impossible for the prey animal to breathe. Several factors come to play: the shock of the sudden strike of the snake, the immense pressure on the body, which especially affects the vascular system, and the resulting death by suffocation.

Typical signs for this are the wide opening of the mouth (gasping for breath), the blue-colored tongue (zyanose), and an erection in male rats.

Anyone who has witnessed this once, will (unless there is a tendency to sadism) refrain from feeding live prey animals in the future. But more about this later..

Once the boa does not detect any further signs of life from its victim, it losens its coils and unhooks its teeth from the fur of the prey animal.

After this, the snake flicks its tongue intensively at the prey, which serves the purpose of activating the digestion fluids. In a sense, the snake is salivating at this point.

While some boas enjoy this pleasure of anticipation for a half hour or longer, others begin swallowing the prey right away.

The prey is swallowed head first, and occasionally with the rear end first.

Boids are able to open the mouth as wide as the skin will stretch. This is because of they are lacking a jaw joint. The jaw bones are locked only by tendons and muscles.

During the swallowing process, the boa alternately pushes both sides of its mouth over the prey, causing it to get continuously deeper into the throat of the snake. Once it reaches the osophagus, peristalic movements of the osophagus muscle are responsible for further transportation to the stomach.

This way, our boa can swallow animals of such impressive size, that many would be willing to bet their last buck that the snake would be unable to do so beforehand.

Brazilian redtail Boa c. constrictor

feeding a rabbit

Prey animals

A large variety of prey animals is available for the Genus Boa constrictor, and especially the larger subspecies (Boa c. constrictor, Boa c. occidentalis) are not very picky. While mice or rat babies are suitable for neonate boas, adult specimen feed on (monster-) rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, and chicken. Even gerbils are readily accepted.

From our own experience, we can confirm that rabbits are the best suitable prey for adult Boa constrictor. We would like to stress that we don't mean adult rabbits, but only juvenile specimens that are not bigger than an adult rat of appropriate size.

Adult rabbits are not a suitable boa food!

While a „guinea pig diet“ increases the body fat of the snake, feeding rabbits seems to increase the growth lengthwise.

It is certainly not a bad idea to feed something else every now and then. This brings a bit of variety to the menu, and protects of the potential risks involved with monotonous nutrition.

Prekilled or live?

We strongly encourage all snake keepers to feed their animals with freshly prekilled prey items. The risk, that a mouse or rat significantly injure our boa while fighting for their life is not as low as one would think. A few snakes have already lost an eye this way.

It is also not a rare occurance that rats that have been left overnight with the boa in the enclosure, turn the fight around .

In the case of an aquaintance of ours, a live rodent bit a chunk about the size of a silver dollar out of the side of a Boa c. imperator.

The wound was three milimeters deep and due to an infection almost lead to the death of the animal.

More than 90% of snakes in captivity readily accept prekilled prey items. One must simply do a bit of acting, and move the dead mouse or rat back and forth close to the head of the boa. Most of the time, simply placing the prey item inside the enclosure is enough.

Please remember that rodents are God’s creatures also. A quick death is definately more merciful than the minute-long fight for life in the coils of the reptile.

Due to the German Animal Protection law we are not allowed to publish advices how prey items can be killed. Please contact a vet of your local authorities in this matter.

If you actually have a specimen in your collection of boas that will accept live prey only, offer this with the use of hemostats to the snake. That way, the potential risk of the rodent harming the snake is minimized .

Frozen prey

Frozen prey is most convenient for the keeper. Some reptile specialty stores ship frozen rodents, which, however, don’t always arrive in that same condition.

It is therefore best to purchase live animals, to kill them quickly and painlessly, and to subsequently freeze them. This also eliminates amoeba and other parasites, which the prey could be contaminated with.

It is quickly thawed when needed, however, this should be done thoroughly, because boas don’t want to lick on the rat like a popsicle. The rodent, or whatever you are offering, should be luke warm, since the snake could otherwise get sick.

Vitamins

One disadvantage of frozen prey should be mentioned: Vitamins are lost in the freezing process. It is therefore necessary to add a vitamine supplement occasionally.

Best suitable for this are liquid supplements (available at pharmacies).

It is not recommended to pour this over the prey animals, as the snake may become irritated by the smell of the medication. It is better to inject a small amount (one to several drops, depending on the size of the snake) into the dead rodent, using a syringe.

At this point, keepers should be cautioned not to overdo these supplements, as the vitamine A, which is contained in most vitamine supplements, can lead to shortened shed cycles if overapplied. It often takes a long time before the body can work off the excess vitamine A.

The most natural way to provide our boas with all the necessities is to breed the prey animals yourself, and feeding them with high-quality food. Rats love fruit pieces and lettuce. Only rodents that have been raised on stale bread do not make good snake food.

Another thing: Avoid offering rejected prey items to other animals. Nasty diseases have been passed along enclosures that way.

Size of prey

Lets stick with our newly acquired neonates, that are, say, four months old.

Some of the pure subspecies of the Genus Boa constrictor, especially Boa c. constrictor and Boa c. amarali, are notorious for regurgitating the half-digested prey when fed too frequently or with oversized rodents in their first year.

You can only avoid this by doing the following:

boas in the first six months should be fed with fuzzy mice or pinky rats only
neonate Boa constrictors should only be fed once every two weeks, and from the sixth month on in intervals of 10 days

Generally, young snakes should always have fully digested and defecated the last meal before the next feeding. If this does not happen within the two week deadline, it is recommended to wait a bit longer.

Keep in mind that the regurgitation process causes a loss of substance. Chronic regurgitation has killed many Boa constrictors.

The regurgitation of half-digested prey leads to a significant loss of fluid and thereby to the weakening of the animal.

It is therefore recommended to inject the regarding boa with an electrolyte solution subcutaneously (underneath the skin). 0.5 – 1.0ml of table salt solution per 100grams of body weight of the snake as a one-time dosage can be very helpful. If necessary, this can be repeated after 24 hours.

If the boa digests regularly, one can slowly start offering larger prey items. If in doubt, always feed more frequently, yet smaller-sized prey items.

Even adult redtail boas of 2.5m (over 8ft) or more should still be fed with rats or young rabbits. If feeding poultry, it should be clear to you that the resulting feces tend to be rather mushy and smelly.

Specialized feeders

It can always be that you happen to get a snake that will only accept a certain type of prey animal.

This can happen with all subspecies of boas, although the chance of this is much lower than with ball pythons, for example, of which some specimen rather starve to death than feed on anything but gerbils.

Well, what is one to do if the boa is into chicks or mice, but rejects every and any well-prepared rat?

Just keep on feeding chicks and mice? Our redtail boa will never become a 3-meter-giant like that...

Our solution for this is the "chick-express"! A prekilled chick and a prekilled rat are tied to one another with dental thread, or something similar to that. The neck of the rodent is tied to the legs of the chick in a way that, despite great effort, will keep the boa from untangling the two dozen knots that one has (hopefully) made.

You will see how your boa will greedily swallow the chick, and how it is unable to keep the rat from sliding down along with it.

We can also utilize these tricks if your boa will only take one single prey item (this also happens), even though several would be necessary. In that case, two rats can simply be tied together.

However, please do not abuse this type of feeding practice in order to powerfeed your snake!

Another possibility, which we also practice successfully with a mice-loving snake, is to drag and roll a prekilled rat through the area in the mice cage, at which the little buggers always do their business. Once the rat smells like mice-piss (excuse the expression), the snake will swear up and down that this prey item is an especially nicely-sized mouse.

After a while, this course of action will persuade the snake to accept rats even without these tricks. The same goes for the "chick-express"!

How often should the snake be fed?

There is no general answer for this question. As mentioned previously, neonates must not be fed more often than once every 10 to 14 days (must, not should!).

Once they have passed their first year, it is certainly recommendable for the larger subspecies (Boa c. constrictor, Boa c. occidentalis) to feed on a weekly basis for a year. The growth rate is at its peak in this second year, and everything that the snake receives now, is converted into lengthwise growth.

Especially young Boa c. Constrictor turn hereby into real garbage disposals. As much as they can pose problems concerning regurgitation in their first year, they prove to be just as robust in their second year.

Naturally, Boa constrictors need to get used to a larger amount of prey slowly. Feeding a single mouse every 14 days in December, and then suddenly a breeder-sized rat every week in January is impossible. Therefore, increase slowly!

As soon as the boa has reached a satisfactory size or has put on a bit too much fat, the feeding intervals need to be increased again.

The following is valid as a rule of thumb for the entire remaining life-span of the snake: adult (mature) females are to be fed every 2 to 3 weeks, adult males every 3 to 4 weeks.

Once you are the proud owner of a three-meter „mallet“, feeding a guinea-pig or a young rabbit once every four weeks is satisfactory. Boa constrictors of that size (only the previously mentioned subspecies can reach this size) generally grow very slowly, and have a tendency to put on fat.

Force-feeding

If a newborn Boa constrictor neonate still stubbornly rejects prey even weeks after the first shed, and is in a condition that allows no further waiting, it is time to force-feed the snake.

For this purpose, you kill a prey animal of according size (pinkie mouse), and use egg white to reduce the friction. Next, take the freshly-killed rodent horizontally with a pair of tweezers in a manner that the arms of the tweezers do not reach beyond the head of the pinkie mouse. Then, push the prey into the mouth of the snake, until it cannot be seen anymore. In most cases by far, this activates the swallowing refelx of the young snake, and the further transport of the rodent to the stomach is done automatically. If this is not the case, you may massage the rodent carefully towards the midbody of the snake, until it reaches its final destiny.

After about a week, you may offer food again. If rejected, it needs to be force-fed again. This procedure has to be repeated until the animal feeds on its own.

In most cases, this happens within a few weeks. However, we have heard about stubborn animals that had to be force-fed for more than a year.

Force-feeding sick snakes leads in many cases to the death of the animals, due to the stress caused by the procedure. We therefore find force-feeding only to be suitable for neonate boids, who reject all prey.

Defecation

The boa excretes urine and uric acids about three to fice days after feeding. The ladder appears as whitetish to yellowish clumps of soft, and sometimes even hard consistency.

The later deposited feces should be formed, of brownish coloration, and not too smelly (however, do not expect scents of lily, either).

If feeding poultry, the feces can be very mushy and smelly. This is not a reason to be worried though, this is normal in that case.

You also don’t need to get worried if adult boas do not defecate over long periods of time. Especially Boa constrictors of the subspecies Boa c. amarali are experts at collecting feces, as we were able to determine. In this subspecies, even the neonates have the keeper waiting quite a while before the last meal makes its reappearance.