Has anyone ever had obsoletas injure each other when courting/breeding? This year, my albino brindle black rats appeared to be breeding very strong, and both ended up with bite wounds on them. Primarily in the neck area, where you see males holding onto females when breeding, except, it happened to both of the snakes, not just the female! Also, the male had a bite further back his body. Neither of these were anything serious- in a couple instances, i just saw little black dots in the pattern of teeth, and in one of them, there were a couple little infected spots between scales that healed up fine.

I just discovered the same thing on my male whitesided Everglades rat. And I have to say, this one doesn't terribly surprise me. The female he bred this year has a bit of a temper, and strikes at me regularly. It does kind of scare me that his appear to be quite large. They weren't there last week when I fed him, but tonight, he has three spots that are kind of puffy, one of which you can see puffy white skin in between scales - this one looks slightly infected. I guess I'd better mix some nolvasan, and get him cleaned up!

I've only ever bred one pair of obsoletas before (black rats), although I've been keeping them for years, and have never seen this type of behavior. Is this common? Or is it a freak occurance, and I had it happen three times?

thanks,
Ronnie Nocera

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• breeding injuries ? - Redmoon, Sun Sep 28 20:53:00 2008