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I have a question that I am sure has been asked. Is it just personal opinion that a slow decrease in temp and daylight hours is a must for breeding retics. I have heared both ways and was just wondering what some of your thoughts might be. Also if I do produce is an incubator a must or is that also personal opinion?

Thanks DREW

As far as retics go, the female does not have the ability to actively, or physiologically thermoregulate the eggs mass as a burmese female would be able to. Retics are passive maternal incubators, and gather heat from external sources to maintain the proper incubation temperature of the egg mass. That being the case, maternal incubation with retics requires a higher degree of cage temperature control. A thermoregulating species would have the ability to raise the egg mass temperature if the ambient cage temperature were to drop a few degrees for an extended period. In the captive environment, a female retic would not have this ability. With a maternally incubating retic, you would need to hold the ambient cage temps within the 87 to 90 degree range for the entire incubation period, and maintain the relative humidity at the nest site at a constant 85% to 90%. High humidity can be maintained by a combination of misting, and the use of water containers with evaporative wicks of paper towels surrounding the nest box.

I have used maternal incubation with burmese many times in the past, but have never bred retics, so obviously have never tried it with them. With the burmese, it works as well as the best artificial incubators if you have the proper cage setup. Almost everyone uses artificial incubation because it is generally easier and offers greater control, especially when working with non-thermoregulating species. However, maternal incubation with retics, although quite a challenge, could be done with the proper advanced planning. Good luck with whatever choice you make, and let me know if you decide to go with the maternal. Thanks,

Kelly

Thanks for the info I will go with an incubator if they produce1

Thanks DREW

I have bred both retics and burms and have used maternal incubation for both species, retics can raise the temps of the egg mass without basking, the do not use the same method as the burmese however (twitching/shivering), they do use some type of breathing technique, and also I have observed the belly scales moving at high rates of speed individually all over the belly in different parts of the snake, I lowered the ambient temperature purposly to 70 degrees (12 hours)and the snake maintained an intracoil temperature of 90 the entire time, specifcally proving although they do not use the same technique as burms they do have the ability to do so without basking, how I am not quite sure, but during my experiment I did notics an obvious change in the snakes breathing and the belly scutes moving individually at a high rate of speed, but no shivering like burms. all eggs hatched sucesssfully with any anomalies, but I am not quite certain how they do it, but I did notice those differences in breathing and belly scales when temps where lowered and intracoil temps did not drop even 1 degree in 12 hours against a backround temp of 70
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Frank Roberts
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John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

I have used maternal incubation at leats 5 times in retics and had fluctuating temps with same results. I also believe bob clark noticed the "strange" breathing as well, he made no mention of the belly scutes however
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Frank Roberts
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John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

Frank, you are quite correct in that retics can thermoregulate to a certain degree. I apologize, I really didn't make my point very clear, and what I was trying to say was that the retic female cannot physiologically thermoregulate to near the degree of the female burmese, and will use passive means for additional heat. I was trying to compare the female burmese thermoregulatory capabilities in contrast to the retics. My main point was that burmese females are able to sustain the egg mass at a constant temperature over many weeks even with the ambient temps at 10 degrees or more cooler. Female retics, as you have noted, and african rocks, are able to thermoregulate the egg mass to a smaller degree by physiologically raising their metabolism to produce metabolic heat, but without the heavy muscular contractions seen with the burmese. The increased respiration you are seeing is due to the much higher oxygen consumption required for the metabolic increase. Because they are not producing the amount of heat that the burmese is capable of, it has been shown that with retics and rocks, it appears that they can only hold the temps a few degrees above ambient for extended periods, as in days or weeks. In their natural environment, they can and will switch to passive thermoregulation when needed. It has been reported that retics and rocks have been seen to leave the egg mass and bask when the ambient temps drop too low at night for the female to physiologically bring the egg mass temp. up again to the proper level. That is why the ambient cage temps should be only a few degrees lower than the preferred incubation temps when using maternal incubation with retics.

You are definitely one of a very few that have ever used maternal incubation with retics and with your great success, it sounds like you have the cage conditions set perfectly. The coil temp information you gathered with the retics is excellent and I would be very interested to see if you could gather some extended period data involving lower temperatures, as it is almost non-existent in the current literature. Thanks again for the information.

Kelly

continue my studies in this area and post any pertinent data.
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Frank Roberts
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John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

shunting (ssp) to achieve this raised temperatures.
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Frank Roberts
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John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa