Breeding my snakes this year..

Hi all,
Well the temps have hit the 50's here so its time to take my snakes out of hibernation. I breed them every couple of years and this year I'll hopefully have a few clutches of eggs from my Rat Snakes... I have several species here.. This year will breed my albinos, AND maybe try to cross a few.

I've kept snakes longer than I have kept discus if that helps understand my passion for the herps like rat snakes..I've had boas and pythons, water snakes, pine snakes, king snakes, corn snakes and garter snakers.. all nice snakes....but for me none match up to rat snakes as far temperment and just plain coolness factor.

Each year I let the snakes hibernate for the winter in my garage along a cold wall. Then come march/april I take them back inside and if I am going to breed them, I will do so in April/May. I realized its been a couple of years now since the last batch of eggs when I took my kids snakes out of their tank.. we hatched those here 3 years ago... each got to pick their hatchling and raise it.


pics of one of them now...

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al

And here is the mom...


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Ill post more after they wake up...these guys are literally still half asleep.

I have 4 albino rat snakes, 2 Black rat X texas rat crosses, and 1 texas rat snake.

-al

ahh!

Wow

Al, best of luck getting these guys going this year...perhaps if I am in your neighborhood this summer :D...as you may know rat snakes are my second favorite. The Florida green snake is my first but have only seen a couple of those in my life.

Pat,
We have a species of Green Snakes in CT...I've seen only one...they blend in just too well. I head out as often as I can with a couple of buddies to see what native snakes we can find..have a trip out scheduled for end of april here with another Simply member, Jeff Richards to see what critters we can find as they leave the dens....for being in New England, we have a pretty good variety out here in CT.

-al

Snakes are like sharks to me. Love watching them, love seeing pictures of them, don't have a real phobia of them but I don't really want to be around them lol. So more power to you Al, I'll just enjoy looking at your pictures rather than having a tank of them at the house. ;)

LFS here actually has an Eastern Diamondback at their store. Pretty crazy.

No venomous snakes for me Matt.. I will actively look for them in the wild, watch them intently, but I have read countless details of exactly how the two types of snake venom work to know I don't want to experience it first hand.. My snakes are harmless...unless you are a rodent, birds, piece of boneless chicken or slice of Beefheart.:) I'm also not into snakes big enough to eat me,family members or pets, though I think they are awesome creatures...they don't really do well co-habitating with humans!

-al

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Discus-n00b

Snakes are like sharks to me. Love watching them, love seeing pictures of them, don't have a real phobia of them but I don't really want to be around them lol. So more power to you Al, I'll just enjoy looking at your pictures rather than having a tank of them at the house. ;)

LFS here actually has an Eastern Diamondback at their store. Pretty crazy.

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Al,
Those are beautiful, I can very much relate to you and your passion for herps. I had all kinds of herps over the past couple of years I have some what gotten out of the hobby. however I still have a few snakes and my tegu. Over the years I have keep every thing from monitors to boas to pixie frogs and poison dart frogs. I had always had a large passion for corn snakes all the different morphs that we're being created, at one point I had 12 snakes. I never did get into breeding however. Right now I have a corn, milk snake and my tegu. I never thought I would have ended up with a tegu, but something about them always interested me, seeing them at the shows they were beautiful. I know people think of them as aggressive and not tame able but I mine with a lot of handling and a special diet is puppy dog tame. Keep up the good work with the rat snakes look forward to seeing updates on the breeding. :D

Al those guys are really cool and albino's I really like :). I wish I could have snakes but my wife is deathly afraid of them I can't even get her to look at these pictures :(. I Look forward to seeing pictures of some little albino snakes later this year.

That's super cool Al. I've never been allowed to keep them myself due to various reasons (ex wife landlord) but look forward to the day I finally can.

Your soooo cool Al, you too Pat. Yet another dimension to my favorite online friends :D. I kept boas as a kid, had one who slept draped around my four poster and took baths with me....i just am no good at cages i hate them fish is my limit lol hence bigger tanks!, so of course accidents happened and ill never keep again but I love snakes. I do really have a problem watchin programs where people keep gaboon vipers...as pets! *shudder* they dont live long on the programs I watch lol

Marnie, I have keep several snakes as a kid, black, garter, rat and even a green snake once. The last snake we kept here was a little ring neck snake. I found it in the middle of the hay I feed to the horses on a cool fall day, bought it home and my daughter wanted to keep it. She was in middle school at the time and the snake was all of about six inches. We feed that snake throughout the fall and winter. We feed crickets and later tree frogs as the snake grew. That sucker was about 12 inches went we released it back into the wild. I do not know that snakes grew that fast.

I don't mind snakes. Feeding them mice and rats is not my cup of tea though. Many years ago I got a chance to tour Peter Kahl's huge snake facility. It was amazing. He had a gigantic building filled with boas and pythons. He had quite a few incredibly large exotic pythons and boas. Probably had a thousand or more baby snakes. I wish I would have taken a video or photos. I'm not sure I'd want to keep and breed a snake that might kill you someday. Those 10 foot plus pythons are super strong.

https://www.facebook.com/pkreptiles/photos_stream

Not sure if I'll be breeding any of mine this year, the childrens pythons are too young, and I still have some yearling corns. Good luck with breeding them Al, I like these :)