>>Thanks Cole,

>> So i should really ony brumate the picky one?

>>Mike



Hi Mike, a couple points as you seek answers here.

1) There are always multiple ways to make things work. I've bred animals where i used one method and a friend used mostly the most-opposite methods, and we both succeeded to our considerable satisfaction. You'll get different answers here to your questions, and those answers may all be good ones. There's no single right answer to most questions.

2) Because one person seldom has the only correct answer (see #1 above!), weigh the ideas you're given here against what makes sense to you. "Common sense" is based on knowledge and insight, so your snake-common sense will change as you read more and try more and observe more. Be willing, as you have been with your questions here, to say "I don't know" or "I'm not sure" and you'll do well. Don't believe all of what anyone--myself included--tells you.

3) On your specific question: A lot of people have found that reluctant feeders come out of brumation feeding well the next spring. So cooling a non-feeder or poor feeder makes sense (the poor feeder may lose more weight if you keep it warm over the winter, and it feeds only occasionally, than it would if you cool it--AND you get the benefit (usually) of an improved appetite the following year. As for those that are feeding, remember brumation's role in stimulating breeding condition (with the pros and cons being noted on this forum) does not apply to hatchlings. So if you've got a youngster that feeds through the winter, you get 3-6 months of growth you'd not have gotten if you cooled it, but you've not done anything to harm its eventual cycling for breeding in subsequent years, at least not so far as I have noted, nor have i seen anyone report that. So it seems it makes sense to continue feeding those that are, and cool those that aren't. Your common-sense evaluation may differ, and that's fine.

4) I'd like to hear more from the people proposing here that brumation's not necessary and that many of these colubrids breed in late fall or during the winter. I know some (all? I'm barely a novice) rattlers do, but i haven't seen anything in the literature sugggesting most colubrids do. I HAVE heard from fellow breeders who brumated their pyros together and reported seeing breeding activity in late winter/very early spring before the snakes had been warmed. This might or might not be unique to pyros. It might or might not be evidence that as others have noted here, temperature is not the sole measure of brumation. (see #5)

5) I know that with some hookbill birds studies have shown that changes in reproductive organs occur only when the animals can get deep into the (dark) nest boxes aviculturists use, and which mimic nesting sites in the wild. So LIGHT is an important component of brumation. Where would colubrids in NA be during brumation? Underground. Where it's DARK. Most herpetoculturists I know darken the rooms where brumation's occurring, in addition to lowering the temperatures. If you can't lower the temps, throw a black cloth over the cage(s) where you're attempting to brumate.

6) I also know animals seem to have some internal clock that regulates them apart from the manipulation/management we apply. Males stop or reduce feeding during the early breeding season. Both genders can stop/reduce feeding as winter approaches, even in a room with no windows with lights on automatic timers and sustained temperatures.

7) But those conditions can be manipulated too. I bred birds for 20 years and have noted a lot of what i learned about them applies also to snakes. One observation is that different species react differently (pyros vs hondurans and feeding into the winter, for example). I bred Australian Gouldian Finches which in their southern hemisphere homes would breed during our winter rather than summer. But Australia had banned their export for years before I began breeding them, so I was working with specimens acclimated over multiple generations to breed during our warm northern hemisphere summers. Still, kept warm and with artificial light maintained at long-day periodicity, i could breed that species year-round. That may in part be because in the wild Goulds are opportunistic breeders, breeding when (usually spring in the southern hemisphere, which would be our fall) rains trigger the growth of grasses whose seed heads are the primary food for hatchlings (Goulds are one of a number of species referred to, in fact, as "grassfinches". In years of drought, if there aren't rains, the goulds may skip breeding entirely for the year. On other occasions, with late-season rains, "baby" goulds as young as 3 months, before they've even gone into their adult plumage, will reproduce. So this is perhaps a more malleable species. While the ability to manipulate their breeding cycles doesn't apply directly to snakes, it does suggest the need to consider different kinds of snakes' behavior differently as well. To go back to an earlier example, pyros are observed in early spring in the wild moving around while there's still snow or ice on the ground, and i think garters behave similarly when they gather for mass copulation in northern states and Canada. I haven't seen evidence of that behavior being typical of colubrids.



Just for fun, pix of a pair of Gouldian finches. I've always been intrigued by color mutations, which is why my work with Goulds pre-dated my work with Hondo and Pyro morphs: These two show the black-headed type; in the wild, there are also red (common) and yellow (uncommon) headed varieties. The white-breasted morph was established in South Africa: a buddy and I and an acquaintance in California imported the first few white-breasteds and got them established in the U.S. There's also a very uncommon blue-breasted morph. And in addition to the "green" body plumage (back and wings) there are morphs in which that plumage is blue (a recessive) or yellow (a sex-linked co-dominant, if i recall correctly). And of course before i"d even stopped breeding goulds about 15 years ago, those various morphs had been combined into a multitude of combinations of head, chest and body colors. It was very interesting. I hope it's at least not boring here.



Lastly, snake pix just to keep us on topic (though they're kings, not milks). See the link just under the photo.







and everyone likes snake pix

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