I generally keep all of my hognose separated unless I am trying to breed a pair. I keep them paired up anywhere from a few weeks to several months. It really all depends on how the two do together and whether or not I can actually see them copulating, and even then I might keep them together a bit longer to ensure that copulation was successful. The only time I remove them is during feeding days as the females can be kind of ravenous and spastic and I've had a couple of males get bit by an excited female only to be spit back out because they didn't taste like mice. But that's my experience and how I do things.



Like Bob Applegate once told me years ago when I stayed at his ranch, snakes will breed when they are ready, not when we want them to. That's why he co-habitates almost his entire collection of kingsnakes, a species that is well known for cannibalism and yet, cannibalism rarely ever happens in his collection. In fact, he told me it only happened once and it was a rogue female that only acted that way. Otherwise, how he has his setup, the snakes have tubes between enclosures and they can interact whenever they want to. It's actually an ingenious setup he has, one I hope to replicate someday.
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Troy Rexroth

Rextiles

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