Well today I decided I should write a follow up to my introduction writing.  I wanted to go more in depth into the current collection we have here at Colossal Constrictors.  As of today, we are sitting at a grand total of 12 snakes, 4 of them being reticulated pythons and the other 8 being some type of boa constrictor.  Initially we had chosen boa constrictors because they were bigger than ball pythons and I didn't consider them to be as main stream as ball pythons as well.  The bigger reticulated pythons and Burmese pythons did not seem to be the best choice of initial snake to purchase due to the massive size they can become.
Here is the currently rundown and a brief description of the boas in our collection:

Motley-  Motley was the first snake we purchased.  He is a normal Motley Boa, which is a co-dominant trait, meaning that when bred to a normal boa, 50% of the babies will be motley and the rest will be normal.  This is important to consider if you are going to get into breeding as it becomes easier to make better morphs when using snakes with dominant traits.  Visually, a motley boa is easy to spot.  They have a circular pattern running along their backs and will normally change to a solid pattern at their tails.  As they grow, the pattern seems to become washed out and the distinct lines along the sides of the snake slowly disappear.  This ends up giving the snake an out of focus look and is one of my favorite pattern morphs.  The down side of the motley trait is that, to date, the super form, which is the result of breeding two of the same morphs together, is a lethal combination.  There has yet to be a super motley make it to breeding age, and from the pictures I have seen, the skull has a deformed look to it, with eyes that protrude out, causing a very strange look. 

Snow- Snow was the second boa we purchased and the first female.  She is a ghost boa, which is a result of two genes being expressed in the same animal.  The first gene is the hypo gene, which removes some of the black pigment in the boa and brings out the red colors in the boa.  The second gene is anery, which is a recessive trait that gives the boa a lack of red pigment.  When these two genes are expressed in one boa, it produces a boa with grays, silvers, and blacks and is one of my favorite boa color morphs.  In order to create a ghost, you would need to breed a hypo het anery boa with either an anery or het anery animal.

Huff- Huff was our third boa and is a Pastel Jungle boa.  The pastel is actually a result of line breeding and has yet to be proven as a an actual gene.  Pastels are bred by taking the brightest colored boas and breeding them together in order to produce brighter animals.  Huff also has the jungle gene in him, which is a co-dominant gene and produces a pattern change resulting in different saddles along the back. 

Bella-  Bella is the fourth boa acquired and is a Hypo Jungle, possibly het albino,  She has the brighter colors associated with the hypo gene and the reduced pattern of a jungle.  She has a great deal of pinks, orange, and blues along her sides and also has a unique skull pattern on her tail, making her one of my wife's favorite boas.

Baloo-  Baloo was purchased along with Aurora as the 5th and 6th boa.  He is a ghost jungle and if you compare his picture to that of Snows you can clearly see the pattern change as well as notice he is much lighter than her.  He actually has almost no black on him and has blue colored eyes.  He will be the future breeding partner of Snow in the next few years.

Aurora-  Aurora is a Sunglow Motley.  The sunglow is the result of breeding a hypo and an albino together, resulting in an extremely brightly colored animal.  She is full of yellows, oranges, and pinks.  She is definitely our brightest boa we have and is actually the most inquisitive of the boas.  She can always be found at the front of her cage looking to see what is going on in the room

The last two boas we have are both Argentine Boas.  I will go into them and the pythons on the next addition to this blog.

How it all began

      I have always been fascinated with snakes, for as long as I can remember I had read books about them and watched every show I could involving them.  I liked all types of snakes, but was most interested in constrictors.  I think it was the size and strength of them that I first fell in love with, they just seems to dwarf every other snake there was.  I found it interesting that they were always made out to be scary and mean, when in fact every interaction I had with them growing up they were quite the opposite, being intriguing and relaxing to deal with.  I was never really encouraged to learn about them and eventually stopped reading about them during my high school years.  It wasn't until March of 2014 that I started to rekindle the passion I had previously had for them.
     It was a few months before I married my wife, Randi, that we found ourselves bored on the weekend and decided to do something different.  We stopped by a local reptile shop, Reptile Mogul, and went in to see what it was like.  The place was small and smelled funny, but the owner was very nice and spent time talking to me.  I explained I had always been interested in snakes, but was never allowed to own one.  He showed Randi and I a few different animals and while looking around I found a male Argentine Boa.   I asked what was different about the Argentine and he explained that they were a certain locality and grew to be one of the largest boas in the world.  While that was interesting, the thing that most caught my attention was the amazing patterns and the beautiful black and white coloring on him.  I asked if we could see him and he graciously took the big male out and showed him to us.  This was the first time my wife had ever touched a snake and she was nervous but excited at the same time.  I was amazed at just how big he was, according to the owner, almost 7 ft.  We let him go back in his cage and thanked the owner for his time.  As we got in the car to leave I found myself checking the area to see if there were anymore stores nearby specializing in reptiles, to my surprise there were two others, Arizona Reptile Center and Predators Reptiles.  We headed over to ARC to check it out.  We walked in and noticed a much better appearance right away, however the people were not nearly as inviting and didn't acknowledge us, which seemed rude, but we were just looking so I guess it didn't matter.  The first thing that we saw when coming in was a very large Burmese python, which made all other snakes I had seen seem tiny.  My guess was that it was close to 15ft long and easily over 100 pounds.  We looked around a little more but saw nothing that really interested us and decided to move on.


     The next stop was Predators, a small little store in a strip mall not far from ARC.  We walked in and noticed how much nicer this store looked compared to the others.  Also, as soon as we came in the door we were greeted by two people, including the owner, Christian.  We explained we were looking and he spent the next few minutes showing us different examples of what he had and offered to let us see anything in the store.  We found two little boa constrictors that were very nice looking.  The first was a small male Paradigm boa, the second an equally small Motley Boa.  I was so excited to be able to hold them both and my wife was not as intimidated by the smaller boas and held them both.  A few weeks later she surprised me by purchasing the Motley and that's how this whole thing got started.

Our first boa, Motley

Motley, 1 year later- close to 4ft

A few months after handling Motley and getting used to him we decided we wanted to add another snake to our home and went back to see Christian at Predators.  This time we decided we wanted to get something a little different and I felt like it had to be something bigger.  We looked around and found little male reticulated python that looked amazing and wasn't too expensive.  We handled him a few times and found that even though he was already bigger than the boa, he seemed to be easily controlled and we decided to get him.  He is a Tiger reticulated python, which is a dominant trait found in retics that creates an elongated pattern along his back when mixed with a normal retic.  It has also been found that adding it to other morphs will cause a cleaner look, but that is for a different time.

This was Tiger when we first got him, all 3 feet of him.

Tiger, 1 year old and almost 9 ft



After picking up Tiger we decided we were done, or so we thought.  I started doing more and more research and learning about different morphs and genetics in both the boa and the retics.  The more I learned the more I became fascinated in everything about them.  We decided to go to a reptile show at the Mesa Convention Center to see what the shows were about,  I even convinced my mother, who hates snakes, to join us so she could see all the different color and patterns that were out there.  It was at that show that we acquired our third snake, Snow.  Snow is a ghost boa, which is a combination of an Anery and a Hypo boa, which creates a lack of red coloration in boas.  I will get more into the genetics of our animals in another page.

This is Snow the day she came home from the show

A newer picture with a better camera showing her colors, or lack there of

Those are the first three snakes we purchased.  I will get into the others later on, and will start to go over the genetics and morphs as well, both in boas and retics.  We will also discuss the future of our business and what goals we hope to achieve.  Please feel free to ask me any questions you have and I will do my best to answer them.  Thanks for reading!