Heidi’s journey with Boas
I started keeping boas in the late 1990′s. At that stage I only had one or two boas and didn’t fancy them that much. All this changed in 2002 when I successfully bred my first boa. I had a litter of about 12 babies and I was so taken by these beautiful babies! Little did I know that I would be hooked for life and my boa “addiction” had started.
Over the next few years I started collecting boas. These would be Boa imperator which are common and readily available. My wish was to one day be able to have an albino morph. These were very rare and very expensive in the early 2000′s and only a select few could get their hands on these beautiful morphs.
In 2005 I suffered a great loss when my small flatlet on a smallholding burnt down. I immediately lost most of my snakes due to smoke inhalation and the heat. I sent my surviving snakes off to various friends who offered them good homes. I was heart broken. A large number of my snakes died within the next few months and I had to start building up my collection again.
In September 2006 I had managed to get a few decent boas. 2006 was a good year and I managed to breed a few clutches of boas. I could finally afford my first albino boa. I bought him from a friend early 2007. He was a year old, and I was ecstatic! In 2007 I only had 6 adult boas and 7 sub adults and I was pleased with my growing collection.
In 2008 I wanted to produce my first het albinos. A girl has to start somewhere. I put my albino on a stunning female, to no avail. 2 years in a row he tried mating and it seemed there were locks, but nothing came of it and the boa drought began. Luckily it was short lived and in 2010 my first het albino boas were born!
In the meanwhile, we managed to import our first shipment of boas into SA. These were purely to add to our collection, with one or two possibly being sold. We landed a pair of salmons and another albino male as I had managed to buy up 2 female het albinos locally.
In 2011 another shipment of boas arrived. This one contained a larger variety of boa morphs. We added motley, albino motley, salmon jungle motley, albino jungle and a het albino jungle to our growing collection.
At the end of 2011 I managed to breed my salmons for the first time. The female had a small clutch of 16 beautiful babies! There were 3 normal wild type, 2 super salmons and the remainder of the clutch were salmons. Some were more colourful than others and we looked back on the paperwork, and the female was a pastel line salmon, and this was evident in the beautiful babies.
Beginning 2012 our last shipment of boas arrived from the US. We added a salmon motley, sunglow, coral and pastel albino boas and some more salmons to our collection.
The end of 2012 I managed to finally produce my first ever albinos, and managed to have 3 clutches of albinos born that year, as well as 3 clutches of normal boas.
In 2015 I produced my first Snow boa and some Anery boas too. I also successfully produce the first Sharp Albino babies in South Africa.
In February of 2016, we had our very first litter of True Redtail Boas, Guyanan Boa constrictor.
I hope you enjoy boas as much as what I do, and remember! You can never have too many boas!
Arno’s journey with Boas.
My first exotic snake I kept was a Boa imperator (then Boa constrictor imperator) which I managed to get from a friend back in 1982. The import of exotic reptiles for commercial purposes was illegal at that stage however the keeping of them was not illegal. That meant that any that had somehow popped up here could be traded with. That started my journey with exotic reptiles.
I had kept a few indigenous species but trade in them was not allowed and exotic reptiles seemed to be able to pay for themselves.
Over time I managed to get the laws changed and legal importation was possible albeit very expensive due to quarantine requirements. That opened a flood gate for me and I managed to arrange for some boas and reticulated pythons from the US. I had a few boas but most of them went to Heidi to look after and I kept the retics. Over time the retic market changed and I stepped aside.
I decided I would also get newer morph boas and started importing very specific animals. Our economy is depressed and snakes which cost a month’s salary in the US or Europe cost a year’s salary here. I had to buy animals that were heterozygous for certain morphs and hope to breed and combine them at a later stage because the visual morphs were just too expensive.
With heterozygous snakes because they are not visual you can only find out if they are gene carriers when you have raised them for 4 or 5 years and breed them. Needless to say I was conned a number of times where they never produced what was promised as well as receiving the wrong sex ratios. Some of the suppliers did not care and knew we cannot return the snakes due to the costs involved. Boas that were supposed to be 2 years old and eating rats arrived here and could barely swallow an adult mouse. I suspect they are permanently stunted.
Notwithstanding this I did manage to get some amazing seed stock to kick off some of the morphs found in SA today. My pet projects are morphs like VPI T+ albinos, Leopard boas and IMG. I do have other morphs and mix and match as often as what makes sense.
I have the “ingredients” to make some amazing morphs however it would take at least 8 years to reach fruition. I will not give up though.