Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I am posting this to celebrate the upcoming of my bullsnakes first birthday !! About a year ago I was hiking in the hills near my house here in Montana when I found a beautiful three ft. female bullsnake. I took her home to photograph and she laid seven eggs. I had some tree frogs at the at the time (and still do have one) but I had never raised baby snakes before. Thanks to some very good friends of mine at the local pet store, I got an incubator set up for the eggs. I released the mother a week or so later. Finally after weeks of care and anxiety, the babies hatched. Six of them were perfectly healthy but one had some deformeties. Over the next few weeks all but the deformed one ate and grew. I decided to release the deformed bull so that it could spend the last time of it's life in the wild and perhaps some natural stimulas could convince it to eat. Since then the rest have continued to do very well. I plan to release at least half of the rest and keep the others to possibly breed.
I would like to know if there is anyone who has thier bulls in a naturalistic terrarium. I understand that naturalistic setups are harder to clean, can breed diseases, and are not the best for breeding, but since I do not have very many "babies" I would like to try one. Any suggestions? I will post some photos of my babies later and I want to post on this forum more often (though I promise they won't all be this long).
Thanks so much
-Rainer

I STRONGLY advise against releasing reptiles that have been in captivity for an extended period of time back into the wild(even captive hatched) animals. Animals that have been in captivity can carry pathogens that wild animals do not have a resistance to...Doing so can adversely affect local populations of wild reptiles...

In fact, in many states/jurisdictions it is illegal to do so without permission from your state game & fish department. A better alternative is to find good homes for the snakes you don't want...there are quite a few breeders out there that would welcome the addition of a new bullsnake to strengthen their captive bred lines...(don't worry...I'm not a breeder)

-AzAtrox

Thanks for the warning. I wouldn't have thought of that.

Not a problem...I know your intentions were good, but the results of good intentions can be disastrous (i.e. reintroduction of captive Desert tortoises back into the wild).

Once captive, always captive...

Good luck!
-AzAtrox

Sorry to restate above what you said here, I did not read the post until after going off myself. Well put. Cheers, Ginter