Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, I currently breed ball pythons and a couple boas but have never really looked into breeding corns. My 13 y/o daughter has a corn currently and interested in starting to breed one pair of corns. She helps out a lot with ours and is aware of the work and the cost, and we'll back her up by all means but she is responsible for the start-up and maintenance of the snakes.

Anyways, we had a couple questions since we are new to breeding corns. She wants to make butters, this is a combination of amel and caramels right?

I know clutches can be anywhere from a handful to 30 eggs, so how does everyone house these? I assume the babies all need to be housed separately after first shed? How do most people accomplish this? I'm not prepared to donate that much baby rack space to her corn project and she certainly can't afford her own baby rack quite yet. Is there an affordable low scale alternative for just one breeding pair? We may help her with a budget rack if that's the only way but it just seems there would be something simpler.

Thanks, and if you have any other starter breeding tips we'd appreciate anything.

Some corns get pretty sizeable (four plus feet)and may like the extra space a ball python rack box size would afford. Most can be kept in a 10 to 20 gallon tank. Hot end around mid-80s and cool end around mid-70s. I keep mine in my herp room at a constant 80-83 degrees. They may even do well at room temps, but a bit of heat at the back never hurts. The 28 quart size rubbermaid or sterlite boxes work the best and you could get by without a rack by stacking the boxes and putting weight on top the topmost box. The lids are inadequate by themselves to keep the corns in if not secured.

If you want a pair of corns that produce butters, you can go with an amel het caramel, and a caramel het. amel. That would give you two visually different animals with the right het. combo to produce butters when paired together down the road. If temporarily housing babies, the 8 ounce deli cups work shortterm, or any small disposable tupperware type container. Just use small pvc caps for water bowls, or small souffle cups. I have 60 plus baby corns housed in deli cups right now. The keepers will go into a baby rack, but hopefully all the others will be sold and long term housing wont be required.

Thanks for the reply Kevin.

When you talk about stacking the 28qt tubs what would be the heat source, or would that just be relying on adequate ambient room temps? Our snake room is about 80-82 normally. Ideally if we have room, we'll free donate a couple rack slots to her and let the breeders stay in there, assuming the BP temps aren't too much for the corns.

As far as the deli cups go, that makes sense and we definitely wouldn't be holding back more than a couple, so they would all be sold off. Same question for deli cups though, heat source or relying on ambient room temps?

And thanks for the genetics explanation, I was thinking those were dom/co-dom genes so my logic was flawed from the start.

in my first response i should of waited till i read everything. the temp in your room should be fine. i personally dont use heat at all and i honestly dont cool my animals to anything less then the winter tems in the house. I always seem to get decent clutch sizes of 10 eggs except for the one female i just bought at a reptile expo she dropped 6 eggs 2 days after i got her home. If you like the butters i agree with an amel het caramel and a caramel het amel but you can also throw some other genes in there such as hets for hypo stripe or motley. then you could potentially get ambers (hypo caramel) butter (amel caramel) caramel and amels. in either normal motley or stripe.

Tom

Great info, thanks for the reply Tom!

Xscorpio, your ambient room temps of 80-82 are perfect with no additional heat source needed for the adult or baby corns. I understand you may have a heat source with your Ball Pythons at that ambient room, temp, but definitely not needed or advised for the corns. If you have a couple of unheated boxes in one of your BP racks, that would be great. You can just stack the baby containers on a shelf in the room.

you can just go to wal mart in the hardware area pick up a pvc style shelf and a couple 28 qt steralite sweater boxes they are right around 5.50 each and the steralite shoe boxes are just under 1.00 each. i have used them to house my corns in before i built a 5 sweater box and 21 shoe box rack.
Tom