Hello, I’m looking for a snake species to breed and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. Here is some info on me and what I want and need from the species.
I’ve taken care of my moms ball python Zoey for about a year and a half. Including feeding, cleaning and some of the enclosure setup, mom helped with that she’s picky about decor.
Here are my requirements:
Smaller size (would prefer enclosure to be less then 3ft long, height and depth don’t really matter. Also don’t want enclosure to be bare minimum for chosen species)
Available captive bred.
Eats rodents.
Hardy.
Would like:
Snake that is more active and visible, (doesn’t hide out of view a lot.)
Species that isn’t considered hard to breed.
Good feeder from hatching.
Variety of morphs.
Not important:
Profit (would like to make a profit, but breeding due to love of snakes and genetics not money.)
Temp, humidity, lighting, and substrate.
Thanks for reading and any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Milk snakes are relatively small snakes that have a good variety of morphs. There is a lot of demand and they are easy to find captive bred. I don’t know many specifics about their care and hardiness but I think they’re an easy species.
I’ve looked into this species. Would you say that they’re easy to keep and breed for beginners?
For sure!!! Super easy to breed and can lay like 6 clutches a year if you let them. There’s no cycling or building they just breed.Only thing I see as kinda difficult is the hatchlings are tiny and can be tricky to get feeding sometimes. But once eating rock solid zero issues super easy!
Since this discussion is turning towards African House Snakes then I guess I’ll also ask a couple questions. Based on experience would you say this species is arboreal and needs height in their enclosure? When breeding how long should they be together in the enclosure?
From what (admittedly little) reading I have done the adult enclosures should be about 3’ x 1’ x 1’ and hatchling enclosures should be about 20" x 10". Heating will depend on what kind of enclosure you get. Hatchling racks would be best heated with a heat pad/heat tape and a larger adult enclosure would be best heated with a heat pad and/or CHE/RHP. For a thermostat I use double inkbirds but herpstats or vivarium electronics would work better. For a hygrometer, use digital instead of analog as they are typically more accurate. For thermometers use an infrared temperature reader and digital thermometer for reading temperatures. They lay a lot of clutches so I would use cheaper storage tub racks (~30+ tubs total) and get a lot unless you can afford a lot of high-quality racks.
Yes, that would work if you heated it. If you were going to use sterilite storage tubs (which I’ve found to work great) the 28 qt tubs would work good (depending if they need height or not).
I have always kept them in rack systems 32 qt tubs.
They do but remember they only have a certain number of follicles so it’s not uncommon for people to totally breed them out by 4 or 5.
I would highly recommend raising your own cb pair. There are some quality lines out there! You will notice a huge difference in hatchling quality if you get a nice pair!