Coastal Carpet related questions

[ReptileRascals]

David just a quick guess here but do you use artificial lighting?
The way you described that they can see outside the window may suggest that they are getting less hours of daylight hence there winter regime.

 

[Alimor]

Thanks for all the responses so far....

I am currently at work, but when I get home I will try to get the information regarding length and weight. I say try because she is a snappy little devil and I don't think she'll be too happy about it :!:

I'll post the info as soon as the bleeding stops :wink:

 

[Alimor]

OK, I've managed to stem the bloodflow.... approx measurements:
length 3 feet
weight 5 ounces (150 grams)

She does poo before she is next due to be fed, but I have to say there isn't a great deal of it.

 

[pythonss]

coastal q

hi everyone..

ok ad now you have hung out some top shelf bait. you have touched on somthing we have thought about and discuseed with others a few times eg over fed/under fed colour results.

it seems to us that with jungles that are feed less and brought on slower produce colour later than there clutchmates. this colour seems to be better and last longer into there life. ( of course better is in the eye of the beholder )

powerfed/overfed jungles coulour early no doubt. but there are pit falls with this as they seem to have a more diluted colour ther mature earlyer and seem to lose there colour earlyer as well.
now what i mean by diluted colour is that the skin of the animal seems to always be stretched, from being over weight or just growing to fast. Its a bit like a ballon. you get a nice bright yellow one out of the packet blow it up half way and it still holds its colour and looks great...you blow it up to the point thats its now getting out of proportion and the colour of the ballon gets destorted,diluted and or semmi transperant. we feel that this is what happens to a jungles skin. is also the same when you feed one a large feed the area around where the meal is sitting becomes diluted of colour.. from the stretching of the skin
we would imagine that this would be relevint to any colour level weather it be a red bredli or the black markings of a coastal.
anyway thats just some thought that a few of us have come up with..

cheers paul.

 

[africancichlidau]

Hmmm, Interesting and common sense post there Paul, you guru you

 

[ad]

Thanks Paul,
you confirmed my thought process on it too! (total speculation by me!)
Interesting balloon theory, I thought along the lines of shedding speed. (the colour doesnt get a chance to develop before shedding again).
My jungle hatchlings are 'slow' fed, they have only shed once and the shed were virtually black, dirty. The new skin looked soooo good after the shed. But I only have the experience of this pair of hatchlings - long term hopefully i can experiment with offspring.

This does interest me and it is off topic, (sorry Alimor) I should have posted it as a seperate thread to 'hook' in other experienced points of view!!

Paul, What would the variation be % wise - would it be that different?
ie people power feed to breed quicker vs jungles with good colours you could get an extra $200 per egg but wait an extra year to actually breed.

 

[Magpie]

I have been told a similar thing by some quite experienced breeders. They have had some hatchies that friends have had siblings of and they fed a lot less than their friends did. As adults, their snakes had much better colouring and in the end were better breeders also.
I found in my limited experience that if a snake was shedding often (every 4 weeks) then the colour tended to get less and less with each shed, also my stimmies were getting muddier with each shed. A period of fasting or reduced feeding (not cooling) seemed to bring a lot of the colour back. I see it in a similar way to what ad described, when they are shedding a lot, they don't seem to be able to produce enough of the pigments in time for the new skin. With my coastals and intergrade, what seemed to happen was that they got more black edging on the coloured scales if they were growing fast at the time.
Note : none of this is objective, it is purely subjective observations.

 

[Alimor]

I have just read that coastals should be fed 5-20% of their body weight. This being the case I should be feeding 7.5-30 grams of food. I haven't weighted a small adult mouse yet, but would guess it falls short of this, so at her next feed I will weigh the mice and give her an amount somewhere in the middle of this range. Would people agree with this approach?

 

[Alimor]

So, I fed her two small adult mice. She seemed very happy about it, although she had difficulty getting into her branch and had to rest around the rim of her water bowl!

Will see how she gets on with that and what ends up coming out the other end.....