Moose

1999

Cuddles

1999

Snuggles

2020

Wiggles

2020

In the late 1990s when I was getting into the adult phase of my reptile keeping I met friends nearby who shared my reptile keeping passion, and after a couple years of talking about it we went to our first big reptile show in San Diego California in the summer of 2000. It was quite the road trip. Obviously we talked reptiles for the entire 12 hour drive down and back, and while we were there we saw animals I had never seen before in real life. Of course, I couldn't make such a long trip and come home empty-handed so I picked up a pair of blood pythons and a pair of Dumeril's boas.

The Dumeril's impressed me because they had an intricate, high-contrast pattern that looked like nothing I had ever seen before. Even after owning them for decades I still get excited when I see pictures like this next one of a litter of Dumeril's babies.

2020 litter of Dumeril's boas

It's funny that after first acquiring them and having them for a few years, by the mid 2000s I had lost track of which Dumeril's was the male and which was the female. I paired the two together for my first attempt at breeding them in 2007 and when the babies were born, both parents were still in the cage. So I still didn't know which was which! Finally, they bred again in 2010 and the babies were born when the parents were separated. I made sure to do a better job keeping track after that.

2020, escapee baby that I found in a notebook on my shelf

Another funny thing with my Dumeril's is that when I kept them in cages with sliding glass doors the doors weren't always closed tightly the night when babies were being born, so sometimes I'd come in and there would be a few babies in the cage with mom, and then signs on the floor that there were more babies roaming around. We've had to do full searches of our basement trying to see what we can find. One time I found a baby when I pulled a notebook down from a shelf and opened it up and there was a baby in between the rings.

Writing this in the late 2020s, I still have the two original boas that I got from the show in 2000. The female stopped producing viable offspring a few years ago, so I don't pair them together anymore. I've raised some of their descendants but at some point I plan to get a few new Dumeril's so that I have fresh blood in the mix.

Husbandry

See how to read the husbandry charts.

Temperatures, Humidity, and Light

Dumeril's boas come from a warm, dry part of Madagascar so I keep them a little warmer than many of my other snakes. Mine get a temperature of 85 degrees during the day for most of the year. And at night I drop them down to the mid 70s. I do provide them with extra humidity during the late summer months to prepare them for breeding in the late fall and winter.

Feeding

Feeding is typically frozen-thawed rodents. Note that these snakes can get pretty large and thick but I still only feed mine XL rats at mealtime. I know they could take down small rabbits but I don't want them getting fat.

Breeding

As you can see in the chart, I feed mine more frequently in August and September. Then I don't feed them at all in October. In November, I drop the daytime and nighttime temperatures down and I put the pair together. I only separate them every few weeks to give the female a small meal (such as a large rat). I've observed copulation between the boas beginning in December and continuing into January and later.

In February I ramp the temperatures back up to their normal temperatures and I begin more regular feeding, but I keep them together. Dumeril's boas have a very long gestation period and the female typically won't have her litter of babies until July or August. Once I'm seeing the large swelling of the lower third of her body I know that she is cooking babies and I remove the male from the cage. Litter sizes for mine have always been 9-12 babies.