Wondering if anyone here has any experience with gravid female Crotauls viridis viridis... After many years of searching I finally was able to find and capture my first Crotalus in the field (I do have 15 years experience with venomous snakes without taking a bite yet). When I brought this animal to a local Crotalus guy on 6/18/2011 he sexed it as a female and said she looked gravid. This would be my first experience with a 'hot birth'. The female is on the smaller side, and has a complete rattle down to the button 8 segments. Here's a question; why does it seem like all sources say that looking at the rattle gives no indication of the age of the rattlesnake? If the rattle is complete with the button, it would seem to me that the number of rattle segments (which we all know 1 is added with each shed) would give you an exact amount of times the animal has shed in its life and therefore as good an indication of age as anything else other than the obvious (size, scarring, etc.) I would estimate this animal as 4 -5 years of age and this would likely be her first time being gravid. Currently I am keeping this animal in her own cage with bottom heat on 1 side, a hide that I have yet to see her use, a halogen spot light for basking (which she uses a lot) and an inch layer of cypress mulch for bedding. The light is on a timer 14 hours on, 10 off to roughly simulate the natural amount of daylight this time of year for the location she is from. I have offered live hoppers and frozen thawed on forceps and leaving in the enclosure over night. She has yet to take a meal and while I am not worried (it hasn't been 3 weeks) i am wondering if I should continue offering prey. Do gravid Crotalus usually go off feed and does introducing prey only stress them out? The possibility of looking in the enclosure one of these days and seeing more than 1 rattlesnake is so exciting it almost seems like there's no way it could actually happen. Let me know if you can think of anything I am not doing that could increase my changes of successfully caring for a wild caught gravid Crotalus viridis viridis. Note: Part of me does feel bad about taking a potentially gravid female Crotalus out of the wild... That being said, I was on a long road trip with the specific intention of capturing 1 rattlesnake. We spent 3 days of hard herping in the field in a spot well known for Prairie rattler's, a couple spots nicknamed 'Rattlesnake this' or 'Rattlesnake that' without 1 Crot. Went back to the same spot I had thoroughly searched 3 times over the past 2 days, but it was the last day of the trip and there were only a couple spot I knew of in the area. Searched for hours and literally had 10 minutes of time left to hunt when I came around a big boulder to have this girl put on a show I'll never forget... Of course as it always works I was alone on the top of a plateau with only a stick. My 'grabber' broke the previous day and I was actually fortunate to have a stick that I broke off the 1 tree (dead) in the area... this was the only source of sticks within walking distance and I was getting so discouraged with coming up empty I was starting to feel like a moron even carrying a stick, where were the rattlesnakes?!? This wouldn't have been the first long road trip that I have taken with thee intention of finding a Crot that I came home with nothing and all signs were pointing towards another long 'drive of shame' home as it's become known to us. This was another situation where the possibility of finding a rattlesnake was so exciting to me that it seems like there's no way it could actually happen not to mention it was looking a lot like it wouldn't. Was I trying too hard or wanting it too much? Bad luck, or was the idea of going on a 3 day road trip and bringing back a rattlesnake just not realistic? I believe everyone who has hunted for a prize herp has found that they can be very difficult to locate even in areas where they are considered common, and this is an understatement. For example, I have spent time camping, road cruising and herping in CA, OR, WA, ID, NV, UT, NM, OK, KS, WI, MN, IA, NE, SD, WY, TX, FL, AZ. Spent 2 weeks in AZ once and a week and a half in TX. I have personally seen 1 Blacktail (molossus) in Big Bend National Park... This was a beautiful and huge serpent and while magnificent in every respect and an encounter I will always cherish, this was the only personal Crotalus sighting of my life until 6/18/2011, and that was 13 years ago! 1, and there are ‘rattlesnakes everywhere in AZ and TX’ right? So there's my long explanation as to why, when I did finally did capture the gravid Cvv the idea of releasing it was not an option… Besides, even if I wanted to release her the rest of the group came with because that was the goal, and we spent a lot of money to do this… Plus I know that the specific location the animal is from is highly hunted and, well, I guess I'm still trying to justify it to myself.

[ Reply To This Message ] [ Subscribe to this Thread ] [ Show Entire Thread ]