Authored by Todd Cornwell Unique Birthday Party Parties for Kids & Reptile Rescue
Tremors of Kenyan Sand Boas
My family loves the movie Tremors. We like the goofy fun type movies. When I started out, I was able to purchase a couple of graboids, I mean Kenyan sand boas. I swear they modeled the graboids after them. Turned out I was lucky, after 6 months I sexed them, and they were both female. During the next couple of years, at the parties I did they were (and still are), one of the most popular of my snakes. So when my females were 3 years old I bought a male. 2 years later, we had our first litter of babies.
Sand boas make great first pets, the males (with a normal feeding schedule), stay real small (6-10 inches), and the females, while larger, are not much bigger, averaging 18-24 inches. The largest I have seen was still less than 3 feet.
Kenyan Sand Boa | First Reptile Pet
What makes them great first pets? Well if you are trying to convince mom that a snake pet is cool, one she will never see unless you get it out is the way to go. Sand boas stay buried during the day. They will explore at night, when things are calm, but rarely come out in the daytime.
Tank set up is super easy. I use and recommend Monterey sands kiln dried sand ($4 at Home Depot for a 50lb bag). It is super fine, clumps like cat litter, and in 10 years, I have never had a case of impaction using it. A lot of people will use aspen, paper towels, all sorts of stuff. I have seen sand boas kept this way; too many of them lack muscle tone, and are weak. When digging in the sand, they are naturally building muscles. With nothing to push against, they seem to me to get weak.
The other thing I like with the sand is it naturally disperses the heat. So it is easy for them to thermoregulate (adjust their temperature to what they need).
Enclosure and Set-Up
Caging is easy too. A Zilla 10-Gallon Critter Cage
I always recommend a locking top of some kind. Despite living underground, some will still explore, and if you don’t secure them always, one day you will have an escapee.
I leave the heat pad going 24/7/365. During the summer, the room is 80+, the hot side is 90-95, during the winter when the room is 70, the hot side is 80-85. Perfect year round natural heat gradient. The cool side (where the water dish is), stays at room temperature. Care is simple, feed 3 times a month (or weekly as babies), keep water in the dish, and that’s it. Simple. When they are going to shed, I overfill the water dish so the sand gets wet.
Feeding. As babies, they typically feed very well (and as adults). Starting out with pinkie mice, moving on to fuzzy mice, to pinkie rats. When full-grown, a large female can go up to a hopper rat, but typically, pinkie to fuzzy rats is what I feed.
One issue with sand boas is their natural predator response. If you are hesitant, dragging your fingers trying to find them in the sand, to them a predator is trying to find them to eat them and bites can occur. Not that they can really hurt you, but no bite is good for keeper or kept. I just reach in, scooping from below. Above = predator, below they don’t associate with being eaten.
So as you can see, these are fun little snakes, that are interesting, intriguing, and super cool to own.