It's recently been Furia's first birthday, and roughly a year since I brought her home with me, so I thought I should do an update on her, aswell as give a brief explanation of the challenges this first year has thrown my way.
A year ago, Furia weighed 19 grams and measured 53 cm. Now she's at a staggering 194 grams and measures 114 cm. See for yourself:
Furia as a hatchling (in blue)
Color change. It's obvious that, apart from having grown a lot, she's also experienced a great color change. She's progressively shifted from a dark olive green to a blueish grey shed after shed, literally. As opposed to my corn snake, Furia's shed skin is always greyish as if the skin's pigment is coming off with it as she goes lighter in color, and I think it's awesome.
Feeding. She has a lot to grow yet, for sure, but I believe she will be a fairly small specimen. She is a super picky eater, which is odd for a Vietnamese Blue Beauty snake, but it is what it is. She will fast some days before going into shed --which is always a pain in the ass because you absolutely can't tell when the moment will come-- and also when in shed. But she will randomly refuse food for whatever reason I've not been able to pinpoint yet.
This has led me to follow a very strict feeding routine that I stick to no matter what. Finding a routine that suited Furia has not been easy, and I've come to deduct that:
- She doesn't like her mice to be thawed in water, as it seems to lose its scent.
- She gets nervous if I take out her favorite hide if she's under it right before I feed her, so I need to take it out at least an hour before feeding her.
- If I wiggle the prey before her she will panic and attack it as if it was a threat, so I need to be gentle and finding the right wiggling degree is not always easy.
I know. Finicky eater. Admittedly, feeding has been the most difficult part of keeping her so far. Not all was on her though, as I've had monstruous difficulties to find a decent mice supplier; keeping snakes in Spain is not a thing, so there aren't many local breeders and sadly, when there are, they suck. I've finally found Xaraleira and have been loving the quality of their mice as well as the packaging and customer care, so I will stick with them even if they are kind of pricey.
Taming. What drove me nuts at the beginning with Furia was her nasty behavior: she hated being handled, she was hissy, nippy and flighty. I quickly decided I didn't want a cracken as a pet, and I implemented a taming programme very soon.
It was successful too, so I now have a VBB yearling that is adorable. I cannot say that she likes to be handled, and I can see that it stresses her in some way, but she never ever tries to bite me anymore. The taming programme worked after a little over a month, but I've kept handling her quite often to prevent her to go back to her old habits.
Terrarium. Furia will need a bigger terrarium soon, as she's already using all the space in her 90x45x45 ExoTerra. I've put some more thought into the custom vivarium I want built for her, and I've finally decided to make the dimensions match the shelve the current terrarium is on... so it'll probably be a 150 cm long terrarium, with 35 cm width and 60 cm height. I really want to make the most of the space, so it'll have different levels for Furia to climb on. It seems like a decent space for an adult VBB to me, don't you think?
As you can see, this past year has brought a lot of growing on Furia's side and a lot of thinking on mine. I am glad to say that I am the owner of a happy healty VBB!
Scale up!
M.
