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I was wondering if anyone has a document on what they do exactly as far as breeding BRB's. I'm interested in when you start to cool them, when you stop feeding them, when you warm them back up etc. I'm sure this has been posted before but I'd like to see the differences in the practices of successful breeders. It would be very informative to see what the experienced BRB breeders do differently and why. This could go hand in hand with Mike's stats that he's keeping on all of the clutches this season. Maybe we could correlate numbers with practices?? Just my opinion but might make a good thread.

Jamie

been reposted several times per others requests:

BRB breeding 101, not to be used as gospel, only documenting how I did it.

My recipe for BRB breeding. Not sure what is working, this season (2005) from 2.7 adults I had 6 viable litters and one slug/still born. Total of 136 babies. This is what I did.

Cage:

I made this cage to be expandable. It has 8 roughly 2' x 2' x18" sections. There is 4" PVC that connects all the sections together, one vertical run on each side and a pass through between the top two and the bottom two cage sections. All these pipes have threaded ends and can be closed off as required.

Please note these are old pics. Not of the 2005 breeding season. The small boxes on the left were some babies on hold and there were even a pair of Ball Pythons housed on the right.

Typical setups are on the right side, top and third down, now all 8 sections are set up the same.

Normally all sections are blocked off and I house each individual in it's own section.

Substrate/water/hides:
I was using newspaper and just recently (mid breeding season) switched to indented craft paper. Each cage gets a sweater box for hide/moss. The box gets about an inch of peat moss well dampened and another inch of green moss also nice and damp. There is also a two gallon squat water bowl with about 1 to 2 inches of water I place on top of the hide.

Heating:
I heat the cage they bred in this year with 60 Watt light bulbs. I've heard this is not optimal and have heard stories about snakes getting burned but I've never had any problem. Still my new second cage has underneath heat with no light bulbs. My cage thermostat is set to 80 degrees and the whole room ends up this temp ( I know, no temp gradient but it is working ). Also the thermostat is on a timer and shuts off at night for nighttime cooling. The downstairs room they occupy was built as a guest bedroom and has full insulation so it does cool off but does not get cold.

Feeding/Cleaning.
I usually feed on a two week, give or take, schedule. I feed F/K as I raise my own feeders. Also sometimes feast/famine as I raise my own feeders. I usually check the cages daily and clean as necessary. More so during "eating" season. The hide boxes get checked/changed frequently as they like to poop in the moss maybe to wipe their butt?

Breeding cycle:
Around Thanksgiving I started dropping my daytime temps over a week or so from 80 to 75. Still keeping all snakes separate. (BTW, I am in San Jose CA, does not get real cold here so I have to use the middle of the winter as my cooling time) Kept this way still feeding cleaning etc. until Valentines day. On 02/14 I cranked the thermostat back up to 80 and arranged my breeding colonies. For this year, I opened up both of the vertical runs on the sides but kept the pass through blocked. In effect, had two four cage sections. On one Side I put my male M5 along with 4 females and the other got my male Porky along with the remaining 3 adult females. Within days I saw evidence of breeding but did not observe any actual copulation. Left it that way for some time during which all the snakes stopped eating. Not sure when, may have been April, after all breeding activity had stopped I closed off all the pipes, isolated all the females and prepared for the long wait.

Birthing:
As soon as I find/notice babies I remove them from the mothers cage. Their next care depends on the state of the litter. For example this year:

One litter was found all out cruising the cage none still attached to yolk or umbilical. I put these babies directly into shoe boxes.

Three litters were found in the hide, full term with minimal or no yolks. I let the babies work them selves free of the egg sacks and umbilical then place each baby in it's shoe box.

Note: one baby was a "preemie" with large yolk and was not coming out of sack. I transferred this baby sack and all to it's shoe box, kept it VERY damp and let it finish the yolk off over two days.

One litter was laid in the water bowl. I strained the water out and dumped the whole slime pile with babies into a sweater box and kept them in there for a day till I was ready to transfer them into shoe boxes.

In the past I have had litters with some yolk still, those are best to just leave alone and let the babies absorb as much yolk as they can.

Vacation:
Thought I'd mention that when I'm planning on being gone, I stop feeding two weeks prior to leaving and don't feed again until I return. This helps keep the mess to a minimum while I'm not there to clean it up.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, selectively bred from good stock)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.26 BRB
11.16 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Thanks Dave,

I've read this before several times and it is an awesome document. I like your system and I really like the way you have setup your cages for easy introduction when it comes to breeding time. What do you other experienced BRB breeders do differently?

Thanks,
Jamie

The few times I breed them I offered a hot spot of 85 degress, it started with "typical 90 but they would use till I lowered to 85 (helix) so I use very accurate equipment to assure proper temps.
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Frank Roberts
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John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

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Frank Roberts
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..................................................
John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

No specific hot spot, thee is a gradient accross the cage though. The heat is in one corner and the cage above does get a warmer spot from that. Not that any stick to that corner.

But then again, mine don't eat much at all during gravidity, so don't need a warmer spot to digest. They can do a lot with positioning and color change to thermoregulate. For me it's been enough to control the ambient.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, selectively bred from good stock)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.26 BRB
11.16 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

what is the ambient? Thanks I study stuff like this lol
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Frank Roberts
..................................................

..................................................
John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

what i meant to say, "do you know what temp range your females like to keep themselves at in your gradient?"
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Frank Roberts
..................................................

..................................................
John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

The temps are ranging between 79 and 86 plus/minus 1 or 2 degrees.

The females seem most comfortable right around 82 degrees. They typically will just hole up and never come out at those temps.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, selectively bred from good stock)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.26 BRB
11.16 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Thanks Dave that's a 3 degree difference from my hot spot against a background temp of 78-80, which compared to your data indicates the snakes (mine) wanted a higher temp to gestate (then my background temp), and with my reading experience, means the books I have read the snakes need 90 or deformities occur may be inconclusive , I had never had stillborns and only one infertile ova (only two breeding's for me) nothing concrete but interesting anyway, I study reproductive biology in reptiles and amphibians any info I obtain goes into my opinions, even though a large study populations is not being used, I would like to hear from Jeff also. These snakes in my opinion do not need the higher temps of other boas and pythons to properly gestate for a litter void of any anomalies. But I will need to study many more years of data to come to "my" opinion. By nature they prefer lower temps and this mean they also gestate at lower temps and avoid the anomalies associated with temps under 88-90 which is noted to be typical for most boids. This may explain why my females never left that hot spot. (well maybe to drink) but every time I looked they where basking.

Thanks
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Frank Roberts
..................................................

..................................................
John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

...I have tried lots of variations in temperature and timing. I like Dave's Breeding 101 details because most of my best results have come with temperatures and timing similar to what he describes. Dave had great success using those procedures last year. Going by the posts about his babies and gravid snakes so far this year it seems like he is not having such a great year. I have had many years with poor results and others with good results and cannot pin down exactly what may have been different to cause the difference in results. I suspect that the differences in details required for success may be very subtle and perhaps so subtle that none of us really understand them. I used to have easy success breeding lots of different snakes, especially colubrids and thought I would transfer that success to breeding boids and make a fortune. My results have been not so impressive at times. This can all be very humbling.
...I highly recommend that anyone who wants to breed these snakes should read and become very familiar with "The Captive Husbandry of Pythons and Boas" by Ross and Marzec and "Keeping And Breeding Snakes" by Mattison. Both of those books are older and not good on Rainbow Boa breeding specisifics but have excellent information about the biology of boid breeding. You should also read the breeding section of the "Boa Constrictor Manual" and then read the Rio Bravo Reptiles website section on breeding Boa Constrictors. Those two very different theories on how to breed Boa Constrictors will give you some idea about how different methods work for different breeders. There is nothing in any of those readings that are as specific to breeding Rainbow Boas as Dave's Breeding 101 system but they do provide the basics that any breeder should want to know and understand before attempting to breed any boids. There is much that we do not know. Does anyone really know if cooling is required for both sexes or if perhaps we would have similar results only cooling one or the other sex? Does anyone know whether cooling for as little as two weeks may be as good as cooling for 8 weeks or if cooling for 8 weeks is better than cooling for 5 weeks?
...I do have a warm spot on the floor of some of my cages and not in the others. If the warm spot gets up above 90 the snakes, even the gravid ones will move off of them. The gravid ones sometimes will move back and forth from hot spot to cooler area in the cage.
Jeff

>>Thanks Dave that's a 3 degree difference from my hot spot against a background temp of 78-80, which compared to your data indicates the snakes (mine) wanted a higher temp to gestate (then my background temp), and with my reading experience, means the books I have read the snakes need 90 or deformities occur may be inconclusive , I had never had stillborns and only one infertile ova (only two breeding's for me) nothing concrete but interesting anyway, I study reproductive biology in reptiles and amphibians any info I obtain goes into my opinions, even though a large study populations is not being used, I would like to hear from Jeff also. These snakes in my opinion do not need the higher temps of other boas and pythons to properly gestate for a litter void of any anomalies. But I will need to study many more years of data to come to "my" opinion. By nature they prefer lower temps and this mean they also gestate at lower temps and avoid the anomalies associated with temps under 88-90 which is noted to be typical for most boids. This may explain why my females never left that hot spot. (well maybe to drink) but every time I looked they where basking.
>>
>>Thanks
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>>Frank Roberts
>>..................................................
>>
>>..................................................
>> John Rodriguez and Frank Roberts or vise versa

Yeah, not such a good year so far. Only two litters from my 7 females and don't know if the others will drop or not. I'm now approaching uncharted waters, I've never had any viable litters past 10/15 and no litters at all past 10/16. This year did have some wierd weather which I believe affected timing and may have conflicted with my schedule. This may be the reason I'm not doing so well this year. Still hoping for more babies but will have to wait and see.

Thanks for all the kind words on my breeding 101 post. It was my attempt to give back all the help and info I've received over the years and the process I developed from it. It was also helpful to put all of my data and thoughts into one place. I refer back to it myself.

On a brighter note, I'm re-aranging my snake room (again), I've bought some custom Sandmar Industries cages from Barry Berg, a boa breeder in socal and these babies are really cool. Dual proportional temp controls for each cage, basking and ambient temps. He has had great success with them over the years and is retiring from the hobby. I'll post up pics of the new stup in a few weeks when I get the room all put together.

All my babies are growing well, the group of 2004's I brought in are pretty much ready for breeding this fall. Also my hold backs from 2005 are mostly on track for fall of 2007. BTW, I am amazed every time I open the hold back tubs. These are all screamers and so brightly colored they make all the rest of my BRB's look dull (except of course for Savannah and Daisey). Funny how each group has one individual that is just growing slower then the rest to the point they will be held back from breeding for one additional year. Getting ready to start my hypo outcrossing projects with several of the 2004 females.

On a side note, my BCI's are also growing like weeds and am planning on starting my BCI morph breedings this fall as well. Barry's cages will come in quite handy and at just the right time for that project.
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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC)
0.2 kids (CBB, selectively bred from good stock)

LOL, to many snakes to list, last count:
13.26 BRB
11.16 BCI
And those are only the breeders

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

Jamie,

I used to start decresing my Night time low (NTL) temps starting early November. I would drop them two degrees per week or so until they dipped into the high 60's. They would stay there for two monthe and then I'd bring them up slowly until I got to the mid 80's again. I had mixed success with this cycle. It worked well when the snakes were ready but it was so reginented that I didn't listen to my animals.

Last year, I tried Dave's regimen with great success.

My cages are different than his though in that there really isn't a temperature gradient. They're heated from below with flex watt so there's just a warm end and a cooler end. I noticed that my animals would start to cool themselves on their own by spending more time off of heat.

I think I wll go by Dave's regimen again this year because it's easy. One drop at the end of Nov and one increase in February. However, I will be paying very close attention to my animals. if females show signs of being gravid earlier than Feb then I'll pull the males and raise the temperatures. If males are done breeding early, I'll raise their temps as well. it's really always part regimen and part "listening to the snake" as Jeff likes to say.
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Mike Lockwood
www.tooscaley.com

Based on all of the info that was posted I decided to make a little data sheet for the different aspects of breeding BRBs. It sounds like most everyone has gone over to Dave’s breeding system. There are a few other things that I’m interested in hearing about and they are included on the sheet. Maybe people who have data on clutches this year can fill this out and that way we are comparing apples to apples. Just a thought. I didn’t hear much about photo period. Is this really not that important? I was also wondering what the benefit of switching from newspaper to indented craft paper is? Do you stop feeding your males after they have been setup with a female / females?

Thanks! Jamie

Temperatures
Normal Ambient Temp: 80 (Dave)
Normal Hot Spot: 80 (Dave)
Normal Night Temp:
Cooling Ambient Temp: 75 (Dave)
Cooling Hot Spot:
Cooling Night Temp:
Initiate Cooling Date: Thanksgiving (Dave)
Method of reaching cooling temps: Slowly dropped over a week (Dave)
Breeding Ambient Temp: 80 (Dave)
Breeding Hot Spot: 80 (Dave) / 85 (Frank)
Breeding Night Temp:
Initiate Breeding Date: Valentines Day (Dave)
Method of reaching Breeding temps: Thermostat set back to 80 in one day (Dave)
Initiate Normal temp Date:

Feeding:
Normal Schedule: Every 2 weeks (Dave)
Type of Prey: F/K Rats (Dave)
Size of prey:
When feeding is stopped (males, females)
When feeding is started again (males, females)

Husbandry:
Substrate: Indented Craft Paper (Dave)
Hide Box:
Humidity Box: Sweater Box with 1” of Peat and 1” of Green Moss (Dave)
Ambient Humidity:
Type of heating: 60W Bulbs (Dave)

Photo Period
Type of lighting: 60W Bulbs (Dave)
Normal photo period
Breeding photo period
Initiate breeding photo period date
Method of reaching breeding photo period
Initiate normal photo period date
Method of reaching normal photo period.

I deffinitely have to remember this breeding method when I decide to breed my female next season. I may give her a go this season but not sure I am ready to have a bunch of baby rainbows in the spring LOL. I plan to bred my corn snakes this season so may just stick with the one litter to incubate and deal with, instead of flooding myself with two big litters. I don't want to overwhelm myself with babies next spring LOL. Then again i may change my mind. It really all depends on the health of the adult male I have in quarentee right now. So far he hasn't eaten for me...but otherwise seems healthy. Then again he may eat, as it has been nearly two weeks since my last attempt.

My female eats like its her last meal, never had problems getting her to eat, unless she's in the blue phase of shed. Even then I think she has eaten during that time in the past for me. Last time I weighed/measured her she was 1500g and 5'8" and that was a good two months ago, if not a bit more now. THe male is a bit longer I think and heavier but haven't actually weighed him yet. Want him to eat a couple meals before I do alot of handling/shifting around etc.
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PHLdyPayne