Hey guys, sorry I've been away for so long! We had a family emergency on Good Friday which shook most of my family, so I've been spending a lot of time with them over the past week. But I'm back and over the next few days I'll have some more blog posts just for you beauties :)
Anyway onto today's post, I'd like to introduce the first Royal Python I ever bought; Fifi. I got her when she was just 3 months old and I've had her for almost 5 years. We have had some ups and downs over the last 5 years, and I'd like to tell you a couple of stories...
When Fifi was almost 2 years old she decided to start fasting. Now because I didn't have much experience with Royal Python's I immediately started panicking after she hadn't eaten for 3 weeks. Then I had a look online and realised that this was common behaviour for Royal Pythons and stopped worrying as much. The months passed and I kept trying different methods to get her to eat; braining the food, heating it up differently, offering different food items but nothing worked. She fasted for a whole 6 months before she started eating again! Now in those 6 months she lost hardly any weight, and was still healthy and active so this meant that I wasn't worried too much. But when she finally ate again after that long amount of time, I can't describe how relieved I was. Then after that she was eating like crazy and everything was back to normal. I think sometimes you've just gotta trust that the animal knows what they're doing better than we do, no matter how worried we get as Mums and Dads!
In October 2012 I decided that I wanted to venture into breeding Royal Pythons. Fifi was the right weight and age to breed, and after acquiring an 8 year old male Royal Python I decided to give it a go. Let me tell you it was the most awesome thing I've ever done in my life. Fifi ended up laying her eggs on my Mums birthday (what a great birthday present lol!) and I was so proud of her. I had decided to use an incubator rather than maternal incubation, so when it came to taking her eggs away from her I was slightly worried. I'd read that females can get quite aggressive if you try to take their eggs, so I was preparing for my first snake bite, but as I should have expected Fifi was her normal lovely self and I even gave her a little hug. Then came what seemed the longest 58 days of my life, waiting for the eggs to hatch! But after I got to see those little hatchling Royals coming out of their eggs after such a long wait, I knew this was what I wanted to do. And I was the proudest Mum ever!
I think Fifi will always been my favourite Royal Python that I'll ever own. She was my first companion in the Royal Python world, and regardless of how many more Royals I get, I think she'll always be my number one.
I'll be doing separate posts on Feeding and Breeding in the next couple of weeks, so look out for them! Let me know any stories you have about your very first snake (Royal Python or not) in the comments below.
xoxo
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