Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Personally, I don't and don't plan to. I'm wondering if any of you do. Especially those of you who have produced good eggs.
(or those who have tried and have not had luck)

my yt's seem to need human heating pads sometimes in the winter to stay on track but the uni's like/demand cooler temps year round. they are kept at the room temp de jour which fluctuates daily depending....2 females have produced 6 clutches in the last 3 years. but the yt's won't eat at the temps the uni's prefer.....about 74/76* sooooo, i gave them pads and all is forgiven.

You've done a great job producing unis Dan...
but...no yt's yet right?

See where I'm going with this?

Ok, ok...this is going to sound totally against the consesus, but I ONLY use belly heat to heat my Drymarchon. Both the Rubidus and ALL the Couperi always had either a)Heating pads set on their lowest setting, b) Flex watt heat tape and a regulator or c) Undertank heaters(This is the LEAST preferable method because of thermal burns). All my experiences with overhead heating have turned out to be less than optimal, especially in the breeding and egg production department. I must say that I had EXCELLENT results early on with Radiant heat panels, but I was just to poor of a bloke to afford them en' masse. So, belly heat has worked for me, but please keep in mind I also kept the room temp at an ambient air temp of no less than 75 degrees for most of the year and sometimes over that. So....I guess there are many ways to skin a cat(No offense P.E.T.A.PEOPLE) and if others here have had good luck with overhead heating,Id be willing to try that too. Hope this helped and didnt add to the confusion, as is usually my way.

*Cheers*

Fred Albury
Aztec Reptiles

thanks for replying and you may have blwon this theory out of the water, but...

Fred, do you leave the heat pads on all the time?

or...at night durgin the cool-down period, do you shut them off?

Personally, I think bottom heat is just a very unnatural thing for totally
diurnal snakes like indigos.

In the wild, they spend there nights in a cool burrow. There is no heat source.
When the sun starts to warm the outside of the burrow, they come out and warm
themselves in the sun’s rays.

If the NTL goes to as low as 65, no problem, as long as the heat kicks on
during the day.

My thought (which Fred may be proving flawed I guess) is their bodies need a chance to get cool in order for the animals to be
sexually ready. When the constant heat source is there….well…they use it.
And I don’t believe in just not having the constant heat during the breeding
season. I believe that you need to mimic natural conditions year round as best
as possible. The depths of tortoise burrows are cool (at least at night) even
in the dead of summer.

Also…the constant bottom heat source would seem to make “lazy” snakes. With it, they have no need
to move around to thermoregulate. They can just lay there and get all fat and
lazy on a heat pad all day and night.

With the light “timer” system…they act really natural., They retreat to the
hide at night…and come out and bask when “day” starts…move around…then retire
back to the retreat when they are too warm and when it "gets dark"

This is just MY way though. Certainly not the ONLY way...

dean, i'll can tell you one thing that you said that rings true.....the yt's almost never come off those pads in the winter. but this winter will be the proof [i think]. i had a dopey male last year. he barely knew what to do w/ a rat much less a girl although i saw the hide a-hopping a few times. then the WALL sent me a much improved model about 6 or 8 months ago.....the one that mauled the living piss out of me awhile back. he's going in w/ p-babe very shortly. we'll see what comes of this coupling......in other news, it's a sad day here....my very favorite cat [andy] became terminally ill somewhat suddenly and was put to sleep today. he died in my arms 2 minutes after receiving only a sedative to ease his discomfort. he was a daddy's boy and was my constant shadow his entire happy life. sorry for the aside but he was very, very special to me. he hated when i would go online. LOL!.....;=)

I use heat pads (human variety) exclusively on all my snakes including the 23 YT's I have here.
That includes the pair that I got babies from this year.
I don't know if the YT's bask out in the direct sun in the wild, probably more so in the broken sunlight that filters in through tree limbs, brush, tall grass, etc.
I think they probably enjoy the heat coming off of the ground more so than basking in direct light, but what do I know!
I only use over head heat if the snakes are tree dwellers.
Sorry about the cat Dan.

23!!!

did you say 23 FREAKING yt's !!!

My god Bob!

Do you do ANYTHING but clean up crap???

Holy hell man.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Yep, 23. That's including the 2 lone males I have left out of the clutch I produced.
In the last couple of weeks I got in 4.1 and 1.2 c.b. snakes and 1.1 w.c. snakes.
Along with my existing collection of YT's, Kings and Cyclura all I do is clean sh!t!!!
I haven't worked out in two years!!!!! LOL

I'm so sorry to here that Dan. I know how much he meant to you. I liked him too. Cool cat!

Fred brought up some great points that I agree with. I use pro product radiant heat panels to heat my indigos and I absolutely LOVE them...have had wonderful results so far....but they are expensive (in fact, my entire wildlife center's exhibits are heated by heat panels and are used in conjunction with full spectrum lighting). But, my hatchlings and juvies are raised in rack systems which use thermostatically controlled heat tape and I love this method too for raising younger drys. I have also had good success using just good old fashioned incadescent bulbs but this is my least favorite option. The rooms that my couperi are in stays relatively cool/mild even in the summer (although we do have fluctuations) and certainly mild in the winter to induce breeding behavior. I simply adjust the amount of time that the heat panels are on.

I use FlexWatt tape on one end of the cage and a thermostat, this is plugged into a timer so it switches completely off at night and allows a night drop to room temp (about 75f in the summer and 65f in the winter). The cool end of the cage stays at about room temp all the time and the FlexWatt is set at 85f.

I only use them at night and I only use the human heat pads. Sometimes my temps drop to 55-60 and I need a way to keep them warm. The night bulbs just don't last that long and they are extremely expensive to buy all of the time. Last year when my male Indigo was taking so long to shed one the Fred mentioned was to warm him up. Well, I put a human heat pad under his whole cage (at the time it wasn't that big) and this did seem to speed things up. He would never go in the heat during the winter and I also had trouble getting him to eat sometimes.

The reptile heat pads seem to get to hot, I use them for some of my other snakes but I tape some repti-carpet down inside the cage as an insulator so the snake doesn't get the hot spot.

I use lights during the day. I have always felt that the undertank heat was somewhat un-natural also. But then again, isn't having them in a tank un-natural in itself?
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Gregory S. Hake

After haveing read some of the posts here, I thought I would chime in and maybe clarify what I have said before. So here goes:

I have used HUMAN heating pads and flex Watt heat tape with a regulator under 1/4 of the cage to heat to heat ALL my Drymarchon. This system has always worked for me, with no thermal burns, no problems, other than lots of poo to clean everyday (Like I didnt sign up for that when I got indigos in the first place eh?) I keep them on 24 hrs a day, all summer long. The cages are usually large enough that the snake can get away from the heat and seek a cold spot in the cage. When fall winter arrives, I cut off ALL belly heat and open the windows to the snake room. Here in Southern Calif, it doesnt cool down until November-December at the earliest, and we are talking 70 degree days to 50 degree nightime lows..I feel that barometric pressure, which is linked with rain showers plays a KEY ROLE to the onset of the breeding of thse snakes, with winter rains triggering same. After several months of breeding activity, I separate the pairs and insure that theey all have access to heat and food, as per the summertime ritual.
Let me say this upfront: I DO feel that giving them belly heat is TOTALLY UNNATURAL, as another poster here so aptly said. They thermoregulate in the sun in the wild, not with belly heat.
Having said that,if I had the $$ to spend, I would use radiant heat panels in all my cages. But...since I dont, I use flex watt and heat pads. And I get away with it. Greg said it REALLY eloquently, these animals are being confined to a closed space, most cages arent over 6 feet in length, even in major breeding collections,surely an adult eastern indigo covers more space than this in the wild during the course of a day. WHAT I am trying to say, and what GREG illuminated so well is this, these animals are being kept,almost without exception, in totally artificial enviornments in captivity, though I have seen a few LARGE naturalistic setups that incorporated U.V. and room and burrows,and since they are kept in such enviornments,the use of one more unnatural item in it(heat pads,heat tape) shouldnt really matter that much. This is JUST MY OPINION,and many minds that are brighter than mine have had great success with overhead heat and light sources. The main reason I don't use the overheads heat system that I prefer over all others(Radiant heat panels) has more to do with my poverty than it has to do with my choice.Trust me, if you were to give me a few thousand dollars with no strings attached, and there would be heat panels in EVERY CAGE But.....that is unikley to happen(Fred gets on knees and prays real hard for rich donor to send him radiant heat panels)
The panels are actually more cost effective than the heat tape, but the inital outlay of cash is much greater.

If you have read this far, you have infinite patience, thanks for reading. How the heck did I go on rant like this anyway?

*Cheers**

Fred Albury
Aztec Reptiles

Well said. I am withFred on this, it is more of the expense than anything that keeps a lot of us from buying such things as the radiant heat panels. Heck, just buying the overhead heat bulbs becomes expensive because they truly do not last that long. In the winter I try to use the night bulbs but when they go bad I have to revert to the human heat pads until I replace the bulbs.

The heating up of the entire cage during the first winter for my Indigo helped the shed process move along and also helped with him eating more regularly. It didn't give him a chance to escape the 70-75 degree temps and move into the 55-60 degree temps. Now let me make one thing clear, this was a LAST ATTEMPT at getting him to eat and shed within 2 weeks. He was going 3-4 weeks of a shed cycle before that. I do not have to do this anymore since he is over a year and eats all of the time now.

Signing off,
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Gregory S. Hake

But I do not use thermostatically contolled devices...I'll put a 12"x18" under pad at one end of a 4-6' cage and the animl can chose where it wants to lay...The devices never go off or fluctuate, so the animals are not going to be "sleeping" on it and have come on ands cook them!

I've had good resuts using the air circulating type of Hovabator in incubating eggs, too...
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Carl W Gossett
Garage Door Herps
Monument,Colorado...northern territory of the Great Republic of Texas

What about the snakes that you see along the asphalt road. I always thought they moved out there to suck up some heat. Wouldn't this be belly heat? Also, how about when they are basking on a rock in the wild. Wouldn't they also then get the belly heat?

Just a thought.
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Gregory S. Hake