"I have a couple trans pecos that I am thinking about breeding. How long should they be left on heat from the last feeding? How long does it take to clear them out?"
At LEAST two weeks and up to four.
"How cold should they be kept at after that, how long?"
Start them off between 60-65 F.
Then take them down into the 50's. My lowest shelf sometimes gets down to about 40, though VERY rarely. 2 - 3 months is the typical brumation period. If you've got SOME coldness left until spring, try them out for as long as possible. A friend of mine and a good suboc/colubrid breeder, Adam Sweetman, once told me that he cooled down a pair of gray-banded kingsnakes for a friend for a mere 10 DAYS! And guess what, they were 100% fertile.
"I have them in a big rack system, should a water dish be present? I heard they don't do well with humidity."
And finally, humidity and ventilation...
This is an issue that I have researched to some degree for a paper I wrote for a suboc web site, soon to be published.
Having water or humidity in the cage is not as much of an issue as ventilation is. In fact, ventilation is PARAMOUNT to their success and survival in captivity. Humidity is ONLY bad when the air is stagnant or cool, or when the humidity is EXTREMELY high.
There are several reasons and explanations for this, mostly having to do with their natural history.
First of all, wild subocs are plagued with a host-specific hard tick called Aponomma elaphensis. They can only complete their life cycle on subocs, and on no other snake (or any other vertebrate) are they found.
This tick needs humidity and darkness for its survival, as their eggs and the ticks themselves are prone to dessication (drying out).
So, somewhere in their evolution they found the perfect host, the Trans-Pecos rat snake.
Wild subocs are wholly nocturnal. The Chihuahuan Desert air at night is significantly more humid than the arid daytime air. And during the day, subocs sleep underground in the damp, dark labyrinth of fractured rock formations and even the bat caves that lie beneath the desert floor.
I keep about 23 subocs of every morph. A few of them are burrowers. I had problems for a while of them having contact dehydration on some of their facial scales. The absorbent aspen would suck the moisture out of their skin on their face.
Finally, I started placing humidity retreats inside their cages, consisting of a large plastic shoebox or food container filled 3/4 of the way with damp sphagnum moss or papar towels.
The outcome was awesome. Their dried skin became soft, healthy and supple. And they nearly always choose to stay in the humid retreat, rather then the dry retreat...although both are provided.
The paper I wrote will explain this somewhat further. The bottom line is that understanding a little about their natural history taught me a lot.
Soooo....remember that
Poor ventilation plus humidity = disease.
Hope this was helpful! And good luck.
Dusty Rhoads
Simply Subocs