Reptile & Amphibian Forums

getting the 4 new young ones later in the week, and will try going with the small rubbermaid containers. My apartment is a set 21 degrees celsius think that like 72f. Will fill with sphagnum moss, water tub on cool side, and 2 hides if i can fit them both in!! Have a spare 100cm heat mat, and fiqure that i can just poke the end of each cage onto that, and use the thermostat to keep the temp to about 80f.

was origanlly going to put them all in small fish tank together, but that is currently still occupied by a yearling male, and until i renovating the house, he is getting a bigger house

any thoughts? all sound good?

cheers
dave

That is pretty close to what I do. I use shoebox size (or smaller) plastic containers with 4 to 6 layers of paper towels and a big pile of wet sphagnum moss on the warm side only. The water bowl sits in the middle to one side....makes a divider for the warm moss and cooler plain side. I don't use hides for neos because they burry themselves in the moss which serves as a hide. I keep the warm end pushed up against the wall of a large glass enclosure (Lizard Lounge) that is heated with heat cable. I melt 1 ventilation hole in the middle on the side directly against the heat source and about 4 on the opposite cooler end lower than the hole on the warm side as to hopefully diminish the hotter air from all escaping or creating a draft. No holes are on the top. If the temp is too cool I do what you said...put the edge of a heat pad under it controlled by a simple rheostat.. Your set-up sounds workable to me.

My experince with sperm plugs is this: they are a sign that the male is ready to breed, but I have not found them everytime for every male. Usually they were in the water bowl. I have produced litters with seeing them and without. I think they tend to dry up quickly and become unnoticeable when outside the bowl (on mulch or paper).

I try to maintain warm side between 78 and 80 degrees F with as high a humidity I can get without them sitting in a puddle of water.

Others may do it different...just what I have done and it's worked well for me so far.

Where are you from?

Im an australian but live in Finland. Not really many breeders here, have had a brb male for a 18months now, and enjoyed him heaps, so thought would just try and get a few more and get into the breeding side. Needed another hobby, and this one has kept me happy so far. Had been intrested in snakes for years, but could only get one once got to europe, in australia there as so many rules and permits needed.

i have a pair of 1.1 het hypos on their way from mike lockwood, i would have loved to get a hypo, but as im only doing this as a hobby, i thought it better and cheaper to let myself try and produce my own hypos. And i chose his line, as the colour of some of his adults is spectacular. A group of finnish breeders have organised a shipment from the states, most of the others have ball python morphs coming in.

The young babies coming this week are from a czech breeder, im a little sceptical as to what they are going to turn out like, but at least one of the girls, does not look anything like the rest of them. I will post pics later in the week hopefully. I have 2.2 coming from him.

what do the sperm plugs actually look like? and do they produce them all year around, or just at breeding time, if they have been cooled etc?

sorry for rampling on, its 2.30am in the morning here

Actually (like Mike posted below) I believe they are misnamed and are actually hemipenal sheds.

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Thanks,

Dave Colling

www.rainbows-r-us-reptiles.com

0.1 Wife (WC and still very fiesty)
0.2 kids (CBB, a big part of our selective breeding program)

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

lots.lots.lots feeder mice and rats

I think that is correct.

The Greatest Show on Earth

Sperm Plugs are something else used by certain snakes to plug a female's cloaca and it is thought to make the female unattractive to other males. This usually happens in mating aggregations such as Thamnophis sirtalis (sp) in Canada (example). They have all sort of pheromones, she/males, and other interesting mating strategies as well.

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The male of some snake species forms a copulatory plug which occludes the oviductal parts of the female's cloaca for a few days. The plug, apparently formed from secretions of the kidney immediately after insemination, probably prevents rival males from copulating with the same female.

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1. Following copulation, female Thamnophis radix are unattractive to sexually active males for at least 48 h; the stimulus basis for this change is the mating plug produced by secretion from the male's renal sex segment.
2. The mating plug inhibits the courtship behavior of other, unmated males.
3. The effect of mating and the mating plug on female sexual attractivity and receptivity serves to maximize a male's reproductive success by minimizing the probability of multiple inseminations.
4. Loss of attractivity and mating-associated behavioral changes protect the female from subsequent courtships and copulations, thus minimizing predation dangers.
5. Inhibition of other male's courtship behavior confers a reproductive advantage on the mating male; this odor may be the stimulus underlying unsuccessful male dispersal from mating balls.

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Female red-sided garter snakes, Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis, become unattractive to most males after mating in the field and in the laboratory. Male red-sided garter snakes vary in their latencies to court attractive females following copulation, with courtship resuming in minutes to hours. Unsuccessful males in mating balls disperse from mating pairs, but are not residually inhibited from courting attractive females. These patterns of behavior indicate that males have evolved mechanisms to maximize opportunities for copulation with several females, while females mate only once per season.

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Here is a link for interested parties
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and another

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Roberts Realm Of Reptile Research
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Thanks,

I opened my mouth and out flowed a melody black.

my end setup for the neonates, cheers for everyones help with it. They will get some kind of rack when move into the my new house, but this is home for now

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Dave

1.2 Normal BRBs
0.1 Anery BRB
2.1 66% poss het anery BRB
1.1 het hypo BRB