Snake Stats - January 2014

This month in figures...

	Length	Weigh
26 December 2013	65 cm	47 gr
2 February 2014	68 cm	57 gr

January was a bit of a roller coaster. On the positive side, Furia had the first nice shed in months. On the negative one, she insisted in refusing food even after shedding, and went on 20 days without eating. Of course, her growth has suffered from this, as she only gained 3cm. 

I am assuming winter is affecting The Fury's appetite; cold slows down snakes' metabolism and reduces their appetite and general activity. We'll see if she proves to be a true VBB during the summer.








Scale up!

M.

Snake Stats - December 2013

These are this past month's figures:

	Length	Weigh
18 November 2013	59 cm	36 gr
8 December 2013	-	45 gr
26 December 2013	65 cm	47 gr

The Fury is getting long and slender, she's grown quite a bit in length although the weigh is not following up. That's due to this month's shedding time; Furia does not accept food when in shed or about to be. She's gone 16 days without eating this time, so that's that.

I cannot tell weigh-wise, but she's at a stable 6 cm / month growth rate in length. I am impressed!

Scale up!

M.

How to measure your snake?

I'm all in for keeping record of my snakes' growth; not only to pat myself in the back and show off, but because it evidences a bunch of stuff.

At first, in what seems the paleolithic, I simply measured my corn snake's shed skin. It's so much easier than to get your snake ligned up... BUT it's not accurate. Definitely not. If you've held recently shed skin in your hands you know it feels moist and is quite stretchy. In fact, your snake may very well have stretched it while slithering off of it. Ditch this option.

What has worked wonders ever since is the Snake Measurer Serpiwidget. 

Directions

1. Take a picture of your snake next to a ruler or any object that can work as reference (pen, phone, etc.), like so:

2. Upload the picture to the Snake Measurer's site.

3. Measure your ruler or reference object and specify it's length in the Snake Measurer (remember to specify the measure unit).

4. Go through your snake's body from one end to the other, trying to select the centre of its body. If your snake shape is curvy, like in the picture above, I'd recommend to select small portions of body each time, even though the program is going to mimic the curves as accurately as possible.

5. Feel awesome because your snake has grown.

I hope this helped :)

Scale up!

M.

Keeping record - get your Vietnamese Blue Beauty's business straight.

As you know, I keep record of my VBB's data, and it's obviously not only to write my Snake Stats but to be able to control that everything is fine.

You can do as you like best; I am quite old school and get it all written down by hand in a specific notebook. These are the events I keep record of:

1. Feeds & prey size. You will probably feed your snake every week for a long time, so it's quite easy to remember the day your snake is due a meal, but circumstances may bring you to feed your snake every 5, 10 or 14 days. Then, it becomes tricky. Having it noted down makes it a no-brainer... Also, regarding the prey size, it's always good to know for how long you've been feeding your snake this or that mice size in order to be able to evaluate if your snake is growing adequately or if you should increase the size of the prey, for example.                                                                                 
2. Sheds. The time elapsed between sheds is indicative of various things (as explained here). A growth spurt, a skin injury, parasites, etc. It's good to get your data straight just in case you need to check it later on; after a while you will not be able to remember when or how often did your snake go through ecdysis.                                                                                                             
3. Weight & length. Controling your Vietnamese Blue Beauty's growth is very important, as it can evidence health issues and internal (digestive) injuries.                                                                                                                         
4. Other random stuff. In here I just write down if The Fury was grumpy, if she seems to have injured herself and where, if she takes too long to poo, if she does it too often, if she's more active, if she's more secretive, you name it. Anything that seems relevant or important at the time.

Scale up!

M.

Let me introduce you...

For now, this online notebook will have three actors: you, my VBB and me.

Let me start by saying that I am glad you stopped by and hope you will find what you are looking for in here. If you don’t, feel free to leave me a comment or send me a message and I’ll see what I can do.

About me, there’s just nothing interesting to be told, except that I have a little experience with snakes. I’ve always been in love with animals in general and reptiles in particular. Though snakes are my favorite hands down. In September 2012 I caved in and bought a corn snake to get me started. I had Discordia for a year and she was the most placid thing. Never aggressive, good eater and shedder, she fooled me into thinking keeping snakes was easy. No, not really ;)

I knew I wanted some sort of challenge snake-wise but wasn’t really planning anything in particular. In September 2013 I went to the annual reptile show nearby, wishlist in hand with just a list of accessories that I needed, and decided to behave like a good girl. Among around 500 snakes there, just two were Vietnamese Beauty snakes, and I happened to see them. That’s how my VBB girl made her entrance…

She was this teeny tiny olive toned shoelace locked up in a ridiculous deli cup in the Serpentarium stand.  After putting some thought into it -I wasn’t prepared for her and was going to face some major logistic problems- I asked to hold her. She tried to flee from my hands just as if she was going to grow wings in mid-air, she wasn’t aggressive at all but so freakin’ nervous she started rattling her tail as soon as she was put back in her deli cup. That’s when my friend told me to get her because we were very much alike… I am not even denying it.

Here are two pictures of her when she got home, in blue:

She’s a CB 2013 female Vietnamese blue beauty. When I bought her she was probably 2 months old, measured roughly 50cm and weighed 19gr.

She sure had some serious attitude, and I just love that. I named her Furia because it fitted her very well at the time; it means fury in Spanish. I wanted a challenge and I had it. Let’s see what she put me through…