My pet project

[BFM_JANE]

I held the babies today, they're just so small and pretty! I can't get over it. It's the contrast between the white on them and the color, very striking (snake pun?). The ultramel ran away from me as soon as I took the lid off, but the miami actually investigated my hand until I tried to grab it, then got outta there. Rattled its little tail too, so sweet. Still caught 'em. 

The first feeding day (with me, they've eaten twice before) will be Sunday, where I'll cut a pinky in half lengthwise and let them have one half. That's going to be a mess. They should eat a few small meals at first with me, but surely the breeder doesn't cut mice in half for 1000 baby snakes. I wonder if I can find some really small pinkies in my bag of goodies...

Got a new camera (charging now!) and the pics will still be bad, just easier to take. I've had it with touchscreens, hmpf. Will see if I can get any decent pictures in a few hours.

[BFM_JANE]

Just fed the babies their second meal with me. The ultramel is a good eater, goes right for Mr Mouse and swallows it down. The miami makes me nervous. Stares at it, ignores it for a while, just doesn't seem enthusiastic about it. But after some time alone, the pinky portion is gone, so it's all good in the end.

I tried to take some quick pics while holding them, and that failed. They're really fast and really jumpy. I tried to take some pics of them on their own, and that didn't really work either. The miami was all over the place, couldn't get one. The ultramel sat still for one brief moment and I managed to get a blurry pic. Quarter in there for size, she's so small!


This was lightened in GIMP because I can't figure out the camera settings yet. Doesn't look too over processed... to me :P
But the snake color is pretty close.


The red snake is "in blue" now, or getting close to shedding. I never really realized how big he was until I held the babies. They're very small, they barely weigh anything, and they're really twitchy, like spiders. The red snake is a bit over two feet, practically weighs a ton, and is nice and calm. He seems enormous to me now, it's funny.

I shouldn't be messing with him when he's like this, but did it anyway. I wanted to get some pictures of him before and after a shed to see how the colors change. He's got the zombie eyes and the overall color is lighter and dusty. He should clear up in a few days before the shed and I'll get more shots then, and get some after the shed when he's really bright. But for now, here's some quickly grabbed ones, just plopped him on the table and got him.


These are with flash, so don't look great. Click for supersized images, in case you wanted to count the scales:







(lol - the camera finds some random focus areas, and it's obvious in the last one)


PS- And the camera = Coolpix S6300

[BFM_JANE]

The red snake looks the same before and after a shed. Oh well, worth a shot trying the comparisons. Moved him up on food size, to fuzzies. Hopefully put some meat on his bones now.

The ultramel is already getting ready to shed, so no food tonight (or this week). She's a burrower, so I gave her some bedding. I think I like the snakes better on just paper towels, but she likes to stay hidden and buried. Here are a few typical sightings, definitely not a show snake:




(Caught her sleeping in this one, you can see her eye rolled up in her head)


The miami is the complete opposite in personality. Always out and about, and she hisses and strikes at me, rattles her tail, and a few times she's crawled right into my hand to investigate, which is not normal.




(Still a little camera shy)


Had to dig through my bag of pinkies to find and separate the smaller runty ones from the bigger plump ones. Got tired of cutting them in half REALLY fast. That is one unsavory task. Miami's eating as I post, she does not like to be watched while eating. Lame.

/snake update

[BFM_JANE]

The little miami is 11 grams (up from 8 grams). Still nervous and twitchy, but pretty adventurous. I reached in to get her the other day, and she struck at me, then crawled right into my hand a few seconds later. Silly thing. And she is a poop machine! She goes every 24 hours, where the other two only go once or twice a week.


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The ultramel is up to 17 grams, from the previous 11 grams. Definitely the prettier snake IMO.

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The bloodred just shed a week ago, caught him in the act. I'd never touched the shed skin so soon after it's come off, and it was moist. *gag*

I upped his food to fuzzies, and will move to hoppers in a month or two. He grew pretty quickly a since his last shed. He's been going every six weeks since I've had him, but shed in four weeks this time. I don't have his current weight or picture since he most recent shed, but he was 77 grams last time I weighed him. He still looks like this though, this is from a month ago, nice and on display:

[BFM_JANE]

And while I'm here...

It's feeding day for the ultramel. Much to her displeasure, we watched a movie together earlier and she had to hang around with me for almost an hour. It's good for her. I put her back and went in to feed her a few hours later, and found this. What a mess! I'm sure she did it in protest. No idea how she got the little plastic hide flipped over, and no idea what she was doing in one place for so long.

This is one day after I had to replace the bedding when it all got soaked from the water dish. The downside of using a paper bedding. And having a naughty snake.





Order restored:

[BFM_Crimson]

She did make a mess! There's wood shavings everywhere!

[BFM_JANE]

Look at these babies, how cute:








And do you see that ruler? Got it for a quarter at Walmart after the Back to School sale was over. Do you know how often I use a ruler? Never. I never use rulers. But it was a quarter, how could I pass it up. I have like 15 extension cords for the same reason. "Whoa, only two dollars? Score!"

PS- I'm getting another corn snake. Last one for a while, I swear! Will be here next weekish.

[BFM_Kiwi]

And it's shatter resistant!

[BFM_JANE]

It really is! I've been smacking people with it every chance I get. Very sturdy.

[BFM_JANE]

I got that other snake I was talking about. It's a seven year old adult, called an okeetee, and it's enormous. It's female.

She's been mostly hiding since I got her on Tuesday. I took her out to feed her a small meal (she hissed at me a little) and to remind myself what she looked like, which is huge and dark.

I can just barely reach my fingers all the way around her fat body and she feels like she weighs at least two or three pounds. She's a dark brownish red with black outlines around the dark spots on her back. These are the previous owner's pictures and they're flattering -- she's not this red:






Picking her up is weird and a little awkward. I'm used to the tiny young corns, with their small and smooth scales. This big one, it feels like I'm going to pop the scales off if I move the wrong way.

She only eats every two weeks.

Looking forward to actually handling her, instead of just transporting her from this enclosure to that one and back again. It'll be another week.

So there's that! I have a funny story about her, maybe I'll type it up another day.

[BFM_Tails]

Wow jane how many snakes do you have?

[BFM_Kiwi]

She seems to have a new snake every couple of posts.  And there are 86 posts in this thread.  So conservatively I'd say she has at least 30 snakes.  Gosh, that's a lot of snakes JANE.  That puts you in eccentric territory.

[BFM_JANE]

Actually, I got this new one from a lady whose husband "put his foot down" and she ended up having to get rid of half her collection of 61 snakes. Yikes, that's a lot of snakes! I only want one more... Just one more... I think that leaves me in the quirky and only slightly off-putting range.

But I held that big girl today, and she's a BIG snake. I'd say she's close to five feet long and I think my estimate of 2-3 pounds might be low.

She does the same thing as the little ones, trying to burrow into my armpit or under my leg, except she's a lot stronger and can actually fight me pretty well. She got a few inches under my leg and started to use her body to push my leg up. Was succeeding until I rearranged myself.

She's big and pretty awesome. Will take some pictures next time maybe. There's a program online that will give you a length measurement if you take an overhead shot with a ruler in the picture. So gonna do that.

[BFM_Exodus]

At least the big snake is strong enough to fend off all those terrifying spiders.

[BFM_JANE]

The big one shed today. I figured she would soon, but I was in a picture taking mood yesterday, so these pics show her slightly darker than she is now.

I used a thing online to measure a snake's length. I don't know how accurate it is but I wasn't very good about keeping the measuring line on her spine. I did it once on the full size pic and it said she was 4'6", but when I scaled the image down and did it, it says she's 4'9". I had her stretched out next to me while I was lying down once and she goes from my foot to my shoulder. So if I'm 5'7" and have a normal sized head/neck combo, she's about 4.5 feet long. That's a lot of snake.



From this, go on and click it for a full body shot-->


Snakes are supposed to breathe through their nose, but when they're about to shed, the skin can stuff things up and they sometimes breathe through their mouth. I took a close-up and if you look closely, you can see her vicious fangs. If you look even more closerly (and use your imagination), you can see me lying on the floor taking the picture.


(I'm sure this pic gets bigger, click it)


I'll add the others another day, they're getting huge. Not five-feet-long huge, but pretty big.

Well, here's a cute little comparison of the miami. She's getting too big for the hides that used to be too big for her. Both of these were taken right after lifting the round hide off her.