My checkered update

[jamromhem]

Well it has been a while since I have been on so I guess I'll give some updates. I have been working on renovating my house so I haven't taken much time to sit at my computer.

My little checkered is now sitting at about 18 inches. (her last shed a few days ago was that long) I would venture with the shrinking from drying that she is more like 18.5 to 19 inches long. considering she lost most of her tail I would venture to say she would be some 20 inches long with tail in tact. She loves her worms and will eat a pinky after a few days of not eating :P (she is still a pain) I'll get some new pics up soon.

One thing that hasn't changed is her ability to know when it is me holding her and pooing on me.. She never does it to my wife.

She is enjoys exploring so I should hurry and finish her enclosure to give her room to move around. Her glass 10 gallon is still big enough for her, but she would do well with some exploring room, and some room to add some obstacles for her to play with. She does well with the 75 degree room temp we keep the house at.

Ok enough with the rambling update I'll post pics soon.

[guidofatherof5]

Nice to see you back. Good news about your little(ha ha) one. It's interesting how they recognize certain people.
One on my adult females(radix) who has been raised here will only let me touch her. Everyone else gets a hard stare and sometimes a bite. If I hand her off to someone else she's fine. Then I have a little one who doesn't like me to hold her but calms down when my daughter Gabby takes her. They do have likes and dislikes.
Hope you can post a picture soon.

[aSnakeLovinBabe]

Good to hear she is doing so well! Though, I would love to share a little tidbit of info with you! measuring a shed will not give you an accurate measurement of a snake's length, a shed will always be longer than the actual snake and the reason for that. is because when they shed, all of the skin between each scale gets stretched out and what is normally folded away under the scales on a snake, is visible on a snake's shed. All of those little folds of skin add up and will add inches to a smaller snake, and up to a foot or two to larger snakes! My King rat snake is 6.5 - 7' long... and his shed measures out to just under 8 feet! With big sheds like that, I like to cut them along the belly, flatten them out, and then hang them up in the snakeroom :D

[ConcinusMan]

Eeeww. Now that's just sick! ^^^

Of course, I'm only kidding.

But yeah, I often found with my concinnus (once they were adults over 2.5 feet) that even after drying the skins, the skins still measured longer than the snake. To get a (close to) accurate measure, I had to "catch" the snake when it was all stretched out and relaxed, then I used a string to measure. Skins were useful for once-a-year comparison to see how much a snake had grown, but for real measurements, I already mentioned how I did that. Still, my female concinnus at 15-20 yrs old, measured just short of 4 feet (snout to tail tip) if I remember right. She was WC when she was about 12 inches and not really ready to breed. I'm sorry to say I never kept weight records. I only recorded shed dates and intervals, birth dates and # of offspring, #of stillborns, # of offspring that didn't live past their first year, and once a year or so, I measured the actual snake.