Reptile & Amphibian Forums

caught my reverse spotted calkings copulating today, so I thought I would post a pic. They were under retes boards, they did not move when I moved the boards, Here they are,

Heres a couple of last years that I kept,

And yes, all done without disinfecting the water bowls. hahahahahahahaha Cheers

Nice looking kings Frank!
:Mark
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Surrender Dorothy!

crimsonking.piczo.com/

I like it!
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Todd Hughes

very pretty snakes.

Nice pics, very pretty Cal Kings!
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1.0.0 Lampropeltis getula holbrooki
0.1.0 Lampropeltis getula californae
0.0.1 Lampropeltis getula nigra
1.0.0 Lampropeltis mexicana thayeri
2.3.0 Eublapharis macularius macularius
0.0.2 Rhacodactylus ciliatus
0.1.0 Gerrhosaurus major major

The adults here hatched here and were raised together, and fed together. I simply throw in fuzzies or small mice(my choice)and they eat them without problem.

They also were not hibernated. They have temp choices year around(for the most part). In fact, I rarely check what those temps are, they have heat if they need it, and cool if thats what they want. My guess is the air temps recently are in the high forties or low fifties at night, and seventies in the day, of course they can get to hotter if they want and as you can see, they are on the heat pad in the pic. The main problem I have is, by summer(monsoon season) its hard to keep the room below the mid eighties.

I guess(I really have no idea) the point I try to make is, snakes are very capable of taking care of themselves, in captivity all you really need to do is, throw in food, harvest eggs and at times clean the cage and water bowl(hahahahahahahaha). Then the rest of the time, you can enjoy the snakes by watching them do what comes natural to them. Call me old fashion. hahahahahahahahahaha

I guess I like the snakes because of what they are, and not what I manipulate them to do.

I tend to question the term "I bred my so and so reptile" When in fact, they breed eachother and have done so for thousands and thousands of years. I guess(again not sure) folks WANT to do everything themselves so they "can" say they bred their so and so's. Again I guess It would not mean all that much if you told someone, awww, they do everything and I just pull the eggs.

Sorry for the mini rant, but as many know, I am a little confused over some current keeping methods. These current methods seem to be alot of work and have so many problems with all manner of sickness and such, Weird I say. Cheers

Hey Frank
I bet you don't remember but the first time I emailed you was at a time when you were not posting on this forum. I had questions about parasites and disinfecting this n that and was all in an uproar even dosing snakes with panacur and flagyll.

I went over the top on everything and drove myself crazy in the process....over 1000 doses of oral meds, hours of cleaning with the steam cleaner...

Anyhow, I never knew what was up with the symptoms my snakes had but not one died and I will never know if all that work really mattered?

The thing I learned is for me, the keeper of my snakes, I feel better knowing I am prepared for just about anything. My list of things to keep me feeling prepared includes a microscope and fecal flotation solution. Ball tipped meds syringe. Syringes, meds,,the steam cleaner and Chlorhexidine. I use the steam cleaner once a year about halfway through the season just because it gets my stuff cleaner than anything else and I doubt any cooties are going to survive a massive blast of heat.

However I do agree with you in the sense that I try to offer them what I think will keep them thriving and for the most part see my animals staying healthy and being productive.
For me the one thing that I hate to see is something I see several times a day and that is crap in the waterdish. I spend less time washing with soap and water, rinsing and then hitting it with chlorhexidine that I do washing with only soap as I feel like I have to scrub an extra long time to make sure there's no nasties left in the dish they drink from.

But...I never check temps or pay much attention to anything they do anymore...they all are doing fine with what I have provided them for years and it seems like the less I mess with things the better they do for me. I hope I dont jinx myself!
You breeding the Cal King Thayeri hybrids this season?
Tom Stevens
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TomsSnakes.com

Hi Tom, How about looking at this in another way. How long have you been doing this? lets say ten years, just for fun.

I too use to prepare like you do, say for the first ten to fifteen years. But now, thirty to thirtyfive years later, those syringes are rusted and all the meds have gone bad, the kids, then their kids, took the dang microscope.

And like you, nothing died, hmmmmmmmmmmm I guess I will never know either!!!

U see, thats the point of experience. I have a medicine box that has meds that are outdated by decades. The main med was Flagell, to treat for flagelated protozoas. hmmmmmmm Kings get infested with those if the temps are toooo hot, that is, they do not have the ability to cool. give the snakes a range of temps and no more flagell. Etc etc etc. Nearly all the common and they seem to be common here, are gone with the simple offering if a small heat range. Instead of the silly 84.5745 F.

As a field herper, NO SNAKE OR POPULATION, OR SPECIES, uses one temp. They all live in areas thats both hotter and colder then they need. They then select from that range. They never live in an area thats one temp.

I beg anyone to show me that they do. Also, they never exsist in any enviornment thats 84F in the summer and 55F in the winter. Never, again someone show me one single place, muchless all places kingsnakes come from. Their species, their abilities are to exsist within a range of conditions. That is what makes them what they are.

But again I rant. Did I say that? anyway have a good one sir. Cheers

Haha... mid eighties in the summer... thats hotter than half the people here provide their hot spots!! Now I know why you feed so dang much! I have been feeling bad for my kings in the summer when the cool areas get up around 78-80. Good to know I am being paranoid.

Very cool kings too. Some people don't like the high whites with all the black between but I have always liked them better...

Kind of the reverse of my project...

Question... what kind of wood do you use and how do you stop them from growing mold? I use about 3 inches of cypress in my tubs and recently tried to switch from clay hides to a few stacked boards. Any wood that touched the substrate would get funky green mold growing on it in days. Some people said to just let it dry out, but my whole point of switching from open clay "caves" to the boards was to preserve humidity underneath them. I was just using some 1/4 inch ply that I picked up from the scrap bin at home depot. I thought it might be the cypress so I tried in it one tub with just plain dirt but the same thing happened. At the moment i am back to clay. Any advice?

man those are nice, love that WHITE. thanks for posting
,,,,,,,,,thomas davis
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Morphs... just like baseball cards BUT ALIVE, how cool is that???

my website www.barmollysplace.com