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Pre-Breeding Conditioning
The first thing you want to do is make
sure the adults you plan to breed are in perfect health. The amount of stress
hibernation puts on the snakes will quickly cause any health problems to blow up
in severity. Once you've determined that your animals are in prime condition,
you should put a little extra body weight on them by either feeding larger prey
items or increasing the feeding frequency. Do this through the Summer months and
into the beginning of Fall.
Hibernation/Brumation
Prior to hibernation, you want to be
certain that the snakes' digestive tracts are empty. If any food is left in
their system it will not digest properly due to the cooler temperatures and will
start to rot causing some serious health problems. I usually feed my breeders
their last pre-hibernation meal the first week of October. Sometime between the
25th and the 31st I put them all into their hibernation boxes (a rubbermaid box
with pine shavings and a water dish). I'll usually stack them all in one of the
bedrooms for about 5-7 days, a kind of pre-hibernation period at 65-70 degrees.
After that, I put them into hibernation where the temps will range from 55-60
for about the first month and down to 50 degrees after that. I'll keep them at
that temperature until about mid-January.
Post Hibernation
At the end of the hibernation period, I
take all the boxes and set them on the floor of a bedroom for about 5-7 days
where they'll be at about 65-70 degrees. After that, they're ready to go back to
the snake room. Once they've been back at 80+ degrees for a few days, I give each
snake a small meal. About 5 days later I resume normal feeding schedules.
A lot
of breeders don't put their males ad females together until after the female
sheds for the first time after hibernation. I don't wait for the shed, I put
them together after they have eaten 3or 4 times. Once together I continue
to feed at normal frequency, separating them for feeding, replacing them within
minutes of swallowing their food. A lot of times they will start mating right
after they've fed. I don't know why, but feeding stimulates a breeding response.
Most copulations occur at night. Since I do most of my feeding at night, I get
the opportunity to witness a lot of copulations. They may or may not copulate
prior to the female shedding, even if they had and the mating had subsided,
they will mate with renewed vigor after she sheds. Whether or not I see any
mating activity, I keep them together until I notice the female starting to
swell up with eggs at which time I separate them and feed the female heavily to
ensure that she has the proper resources to develop strong healthy eggs and
provide sufficient nutrition to the developing embryos.
Egg Laying
About 7-14 days prior to egg-laying (in
my collection it has almost always been 10-11), the female will shed, often
called the "pre-lay shed". After the shed, the females will not feed
again until after laying. If you catch them just after shedding, some will take
that one final meal. At this point you want to put some sort of nest box in
their enclosure. I use Rubbermaid boxes of the appropriate size with a 1-2 inch
layer of damp vermiculite or sphagnum moss in it. This will keep the eggs from
getting rolled around by the female's body and also keep them from drying out if
you don't notice them right away. Egg-laying is very stressful so the female
should be disturbed as little as possible during this time. Once she is
finished, she may be so exhausted that she won't move; you'll have to remove her
from the box so you can transfer the eggs to their incubation box. Give the
female a few hours to rest, then offer her a small meal. She needs all the
nutrients she can get at this point.
Here's
a rare glimpse at a Mandarin Rat Snake nesting and later depositing her
eggs.
Egg Incubation
I've used various incubation methods
over the years and I've always looked for ways to improve. After successfully
getting your snakes through the hibernation, breeding, and egg-laying stages,
the last thing you want to do is loose some or all of your eggs during
incubation. The two key ingredients to successful incubation are temperature and
humidity. The two most common methods of incubation are incubators
(commercially and/or home made) and just putting them on a shelf in a warm room
or closet. The method I've found to work best for me is incubating on a
shelf in my heated snake room. In the past I've
used poultry egg incubators and home made incubators. The poultry incubators
can be found on the internet for approximately $50 and work well, but are very limited in
space, holding only 2-3 small egg boxes.
Egg boxes, complete with eggs incubating on Perlite.
Incubation Mediums
Snake eggs require 80-100% humidity to develop and hatch
successfully. Keeping the eggs' surface dry during 50-70 days of 80+ % humidity
has always been the tricky part. The proven method is to keep the eggs in a
closed container (to hold humidity) of some sort with a few air holes (the eggs
need to be able to breathe) and a moist bed/nest of some type to provide the
humidity. Vermiculite, without a doubt, is the most commonly used medium for
incubating snake eggs. Other mediums have been successfully used by others as
well, such as sand, peat moss, sphagnum moss, sponge, paper, just to name a few.
Perlite has become very popular over the past few years as well.
Eggs (pine snake) incubating on Vermiculite
Personally, I prefer Perlite. I use at least a 2 inch deep bed
of moist Perlite in various sized Tupperwares. The deeper the bed of medium, the
longer it will provide humidity before needing to be re-moistened. The reason
I've switched from Vermiculite to Perlite is because it seems to be cleaner and
much dryer on the surface. When moistened, Vermiculite (especially the small
grained) tends to cling all over
anything it comes in contact with, including the eggs' surface. Perlite, when
wet or moist, isn't nearly as "sticky and clingy" which I believe
allows the eggs to breathe better, even on the bottoms which are partially
submerged in the bed of medium. I've also noticed that Perlite seems to hold the
water inside of the granules making it quite dry to the touch. Although the eggs
need to be kept humid, it's imperative that they be kept from getting wet or
smothered, which will suffocate the developing embryo.
After about 40 or 45 days, I cover the eggs with damp paper
towel or newspaper. This helps keep the egg shells soft so the babies will have
an easier time cutting through.
 
"the
first breath of life"
A litter of freshly hatched Grey Banded Kings
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