Babies - finally our own babies arrived - by surprise

Well, we've had a long, strange journey getting here, but finally we have our own, captive bred, baby Fiji boas!

I had NO IDEA that their mother was pregnant, but Mazikeen, the large female from Kadavu island, after being unusually restless roaming around her tank for the past week, suddenly presented me with 13 babies. Of course she did this at 7.30pm at night when I was due to leave at 6.30am the next morning for 3 weeks travelling....

Fortunately baby snakes are very independent and can live for a month or more on what is left of their yolk sac, so I cleaned them up, checked them out (gloated for a while) left them in a nice clean tank with plenty of hides and water, and off I went.

Now I'm back home with time to look at them closely, feed them for the first time, and take lot and LOTS of photos.

The babies are about 30cm (1 foot) long and weigh around 12 grams each (less than half an ounce). Of the 13, 8 are brown and 5 are orange. However I'm not counting on this continuing, as these babies are like chameleons and can change their colour quite dramatically.

The mother, Mazikeen, is from Kadavu Island, and is brown with irregular blotched patterns. I think the father may be Rifraf, from Taveuni Island - he is brownish pink and has diamond shaped back patterns and a very red belly. So far no red bellies seen in this lot, but they seem to be a mix of diamond and blotchy patterns on their backs.





More photos ahead..