Reptile & Amphibian Forums

AKA Pituophis lineaticollis. Sorry for the made up name. lineaticollis actally translates from latin as "Lines on neck", or "line necked" After a very long incubation of 96 days they have finally begun to hatch. So far they are looking a bit more like their mother who is unrelated to the others out there. Not a bad way to start the hatching season.

Wow - that's a really good looking hatchling.
And a long incubation. Is that typical?
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3.6 L. getula californiae - 16 eggs (Cal. King)
1.1 L. getula nigrita (MBK)
1.0 Pantherophis guttatus guttatus (Corn)
0.1 Pituophis catenifer catenifer (Pacific gopher)
3.3 Elgaria multicarinata multicarinata - 14 eggs (Cal. Alligator Lizard)

Hey John, great looking hatchling! Where did you get the mother from? Can't wait to see the rest of the clutch.
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"I'll be back at 6 if not 7. 8 the very latest but definatly no later than 9...ish...Moscow time."

Nice one John,Looking goodThanks for posting the pic.

Wow thats certainly a long incubation peroid for sure,do you think this is due to cooler climates in the wild for this species?
Lookin forward to seeing more pics,i definately need to get some lined necks in my collection asap.

The original guy who bred these called me when he got eggs back in '04 to share the great news. I was really bummed out when the standard 65 day bench mark passed. I figured he was incubating a bunch of slugs when the 90 day mark passed but then he called to say that they had hatched and if memory serves me it was almost 120 day!!!

Another fellow had siblings of those that he raised up and failed to get reproductive activity while our friend was able to breed them two years running. The successful guy sold one of proven pairs to the other guy as well as a proven pair to a zoo, again they where not able to get reproduction even in these proven animals. I started to look at climatic conditions in areas where these guys are found and my research yielded some interesting findings. High elevation of course so not really a huge surprise but I noted that the temperatures fluctuated very little from season to season but there was a huge daily swing. The highs were 24C during fall & winter months while they reached 29 in the hottest part of summer. Now the part that made me curious is this, on a daily basis the temperatures dropped consistantly 12 to 13 degrees c no mater what the high was.

I thought that this might be an important cycle and tried to duplicate it giving the snakes a big daily drop in temp. I kept them active and fed them year round and it seems to have worked.

I know that several other folks have now bred them and I think that they did not do these types of cycles so it may not be neccessary but I will probably stick to it for the sake of the animals health if nothing else. If it works don't fix it.

they are little snappers right out of the egg in true pituophis fashion!

Thanks John. Some excellent insights and it seems the temp drops you speak of have proven important.
As you pointed out with high elevation it does seem logical that temps will drop a lot from highs to lows, and this probably occurs over a sudden/short time period.This in turn may mean the eggs take that much longer to fully develop/incubate due to a shorter exposure to optimum temps.

Nice to hear they got that lovely pit hatchling feistiness.

Thanks Again. RGDS...AL

so am i to assume that getting ahold of hatchlings is next to imposible and very expensive?
nate

Those are some gorgeous babies ginter! nice work!

Great looking Gophers. You talked about their home region. Is it somewhere in Mexico?

reako45

Curious to know how old and big (length/girth) the parents are?

cheers,
Glenn

in general this species can get large and girthy, similar to a big northern pine, P.d.jani, and P.d.d.

The founder pairs for the lineaticollis currently out there are upwards of 7 feet with a 8 to 9 inch circumfrence. My related animals are younger therefore a bit smaller and my unrelated female is a bit smaller as well. Some of my pit friends shy away from them thinking they are not as massive but lineaticollis can get to be huge animals in Pituophis standards.