Through the winter of 2010 - 2011 I tried the conventional cool down period but this seemed to have no effect in prompting these snakes to reproduce. I researched exactly what the conditions are on Savu Island and discovered there really is no cool period. This tiny island is usually hot and dry and receives warm breezes from the arid interior of Australia. Most of the rain fall occurs in the monsoon season which led me to believe this may be a more important component than an actual cool down. In the late spring my male went off food which made me think he may have been interested in mating. I introduced him to the females enclosure the first of June. She was housed in a 72 quart sterlite box in a heated rack system on cypress mulch. The background temperatures were DTHs in the mid to upper 80°F with NTLs of 80°F. The heated portion of the box was set with a temperature probe and thermostat to 90°F. Weekly I would mist the cypress mulch and the sides of the box with water that was mildly warm. They did not seem to like this, but shortly after beginning this process frequent copulations were observed. Each time I checked in on them they were either coiled together or actually copulating. The female became obviously gravid by Sept and the snakes no longer seemed to have an interest in each other. The male was removed and he subsequently began feeding ravenously. The female shed on 9-4-11 accepted one meal on 9-6-11 - at this time she frequently layed on the heat tape, sometimes in an inverted position. I returned from a five day field herping trip on 10-1-11 and found the female coiled around a clutch of eggs. From what little info I could find I read that these snakes usually produce small clutches of several eggs, but this first time female had a clutch of ten. I set the eggs up on perlite at 89°F and 90-95 % humidity. Since the eggs were layed while I was away I had to incubate the eggs as a clump and was unable to separate them. The result was two of the eggs on the top of the mound desicated and held dead babies inside that were well advanced. All eggs were fertile and the first baby pipped at 56 days plus probably a couple additional days since I was unable to know exactly when they were actually layed. I hope you find some of this info useful.




Phil

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