The most rewarding part of being a snake breeder is when the babies hatch out of the egg and you get to see the results! It is always such an exciting time during hatching season- best time of the year in my opinion. It really is like Christmas morning when clutches start to pip and hatch. Having your animals breed is the first step to getting there!

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Fortunately the snakes know exactly what they are doing, so in most cases if you put a male and a female together during the right season you’ll end up with a successful lock that will hopefully result in viable eggs. I’ll take you through what my process looks like from start to finish. Let’s say it is the end of summer- around August. During this time I make sure to feed very consistently to ensure the females are putting on a good amount of weight. The males I feed less than the females but make sure your males are a good size as well. I feed like this until mid October and then I stop feeding. A week after I stop feeding I unplug the racks so the heat is off. This begins to signal to the snakes that winter is coming and brumation is about to begin. 

 

On Halloween I move the snakes into a separate room that I call the brumation room. Brumation is much like hibernation in case you aren’t familiar with the term. This is a cooling down period, most colubrids will want to cycle and brumate which is why some will go off feed during winter months. It is completely normal and they will pick back up feeding when they are ready. 

 

Brumation

During brumation I get the room down to about 55 F. The snakes are in cages with sani chips like normal and still have a water bowl in their cage, be sure they have water throughout the brumation period so they don’t dehydrate. Check on them periodically to make sure things are good. Otherwise you won’t have to do anything with them until February. At Valentines Day I take them out of the brumation room back into the normal snake room and let them start warming up. After a couple days of them warming back up to room temp (70 F) I’ll plug back in the racks so the heat is running. Then they get back up to regular temps and are ready to start eating. 

 

Breeding

By March 1st it is game on. The snakes are getting fed regularly at this point and I start to pair them up. I aim to pair them up at least once a week- for males that are being bred to multiple females I will pair them with a different female every couple days. 

I pair them by placing the male into the females cage and I take out the water dish so they don’t make a mess and I take out the hide box. With Pituophis you don’t need to worry about them being aggressive to one another as long as it is a male/female pairing. Males can be combative to one another if placed in the same cage. 

I generally will leave the pair together overnight and separate them the next day. When I pair them up I do periodically open the cage to see if there is any action happening and make sure to write it down so I know if we got a successful lock or not. 

The actual act of them breeding can sometimes look aggressive, sometimes the male will bite and grab onto the female on her body or her head. The males will also chase the females around the cage- so it can be noisy sometimes LOL. 

My schedule for pairing them up looks something like this- clean them Monday, feed them Tuesday, pair them up Wednesday-Friday. Separate them Friday so they can relax over the weekend and then be ready for more the next week. If I am using a male on multiple females I will switch this up some so that he is in the other females cages often enough as well.

I generally see successful locks start to happen in mid-March and by the end of March almost all of them are locking up regularly. Once I notice that a male isn’t breeding a female anymore after a month of pairing them up that usually signals to me that the female will have a clutch. At this point I start watching my females closely. For the most part the females will go off food at some point, not all but most do for me. What I am really watching for is their next shed. You will also start to notice the females rounding out more as the eggs inside are growing rapidly. Once a female sheds I write it down and then prepare an egg laying box and put them in it.