Hi, Your very welcome to ask.



In most cases, snakes are nested in small clear boxes, Which are put in the cage, X amount of days after the pre-egg laying shed. Some manner of moist substrate is included.



This has nothing to do with snakes, its what keepers do. And it kinda works. It will work OK for strong animals, but will fail for small or marginal indivivuals. Even thought it works, its very foreign to the females.



In nature, females go to nesting areas, in the fall and normally overwinter near where they are going to nest. Sometimes the move there in the spring. They stay at the nesting site(nearby or exactly) for a fairly long period of time. They normally lay there eggs in burrows some distance in the ground, in plant material, leaflitter, etc, that is secure with temps, humidity and its always dark, they never lay in the lite. And its normaly down, how far depends on the temps in that area.



That is whats normal to the average colubrid.



In captivity, we do not address all of that, or any of that. Other then the temps and humdity.



While there is no need to address all that. We surely can address such things as lite and depth.



I use fairly large tupperware storage containers, the ones that are a couple feet deep. I fill them 2/3s full of moist, not wet substrate, sand/coco stuff mix, about 50/50, but that is not crictial.



I place a piece of glass about halfway down(that is for me) and hide boards, water bowl, heat lite etc, like a regular cage.



I put the females in about a week before they shed. They normally shed and lay the next day. They normally dig down and build a nesting chamber under the piece of glass.



After they lay, they come up and cover all burrows that lead to the nest.



Heres a picture of a kingsnake nest, hogs, pits, etc all nest the same.This is with the glass taken out.





You can use the glass as a viewing window and not disturb the female, i have pics somewhere.



As you can see, the nest has a structure and a design. When they nest, they coil with the tail on the inside and crawl in circles, deposting the eggs in the middle. THis leaves a space the diameter of the female, all around the eggs.



When they have this type of nesting, they deposit the eggs quickly, normally within a few days of the shed. And lose very little weight. The longer they hold the eggs, the more they dehydrate. Which is what causes most egg binding. And its what is so stressful to small females.



THey also love(choose to) lay in the same nest clutch after clutch, which is common in nature.



The key points are, nesting is picked from an area much larger then most cages. In other words, you cannot put a big box in a little cage. So don't do that, take the snake out of those small cages and let it nest in a "nesting cage".



I had five of these nesting cages setup and never had them all occupied at the same time.



Lastly its not a all or nothing type of thing. If its very inconvient, then only do this with "problematic" females.



Once you have done this properly, you cannot see doing anything less. And you think about more, as the females take to this so well.



Now for the FR stuff, looking at that picture, then seeing clear boxes with eggs scattered all about, gives me a stomachacke. I wish it didn't. I hope this helped

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