Joe-cop had a thread about a female who didnt seem to like her lay box, but readily accepted a tile laid on top of moss. Although that was interesting I didnt feel it really applied to me.
forums.kingsnake.com/view.php?id=1978451,1978451
Think again! Yesterday one of my gravid pyros began the usual nest searching behavior but was not at all interested in her lay box full of moss, preferring to try to excavate a nest in the dry aspen substrate. I was visualizing a clutch of dried up eggs in the aspen! So I moved her into a smaller maternity tub and put a big gob of moist moss on one end, and in lieu of a tile covered this with a dinner platter. She ceased her restless activity, going right under this platter and staying in the same place all night.
She is still there this morning, having accepted this spot.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
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Lay Boxes and Tiles
Replies (24)
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
nice and snug, like crawling under a flat rock maybe.
i like the see through feature.
daveb
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alcohol, tobacco and firearms should be a convenience store, not a government agency
The cardboard box over the glass lid makes it nice and dark, too. I know they have accepted the spot when they spend most of their time in it, instead of restlessly cruising the cage.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
Bob,
Your dinner plate and see-thru glass lid are AWESOME ideas!!!!!!!! Talk about having something useful right in our own home, and maybe not thinking about applying to our breedings.
Great ideas, and I now know what I will be doing in possible future breedings.
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Genesis 1:1
Thanks! I am always trying to figure out a better way to do things. FR has inspired me to make dual compartment lay cages for the rest of my gravid girls. Besides, I don't have a platter or glass lid big enough to cover my bull and gopher snakes! LOL!
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
As you have already read, I think some here make a very basic mistake. And that is name calling, no not to eachother, but labelling tools. Like a nest box.
You provide something you call a next box, but your animal just calls it a box and wants something else.
The key to understanding this is, normally they are designed to lay in a area that dry and humid, and consistant in temperature and humidity, and there is absolutely no lite.
In most cases, this area is in the ground or other mass, like tree hollows, deep rock cracks that are IN. In nature, these areas are fairly large, that is, the conditions that allow the right choices are bigger then most if not all our cages.
What I am getting at is, no matter what you do, your FORCING the female to lay her eggs in a place she would not have picked on her own. Your forcing her to pick the most suitable is amoungst a limited amount of conditions.
Normally doing this forces the female to hold the eggs longer then necessary, and sometimes to a point of failure.
When provided with deep nesting that is closer to what they naturally have, they can and do lay one day after shedding. With little to no water loss and you can hardly tell they laid. Which is good for the female.
So what you are doing is working (the best you can) in conditions that really are not meant for good nesting. Some of you do a really good job at this. But its still not what or close to what they would actually do.
For instance, pyros nest in groups, so the females gather and stay very near the spot the eggs will be deposited. This is part of nesting. Generally that gathering spot is within a meter of where the eggs are laid. (note, not all populations do this, some nest alone)
So what your doing is fairly foreign to the animals, you must understand that.
The key is, temps and humidity. The hard part to understand is, dry and humid. So your moist(degrees of wet) Is not what they are looking for, and normally is one step short of the water bowl, when no satisfactory site can be found. Good luck and best wishes
I think the closest one could come to mimicking the natural conditions is to have a dual cage system where the top cage is the regular aspen and the bottom section contains the humid dark place for depositing eggs. The two sections are connected by a short length of pvc pipe. John Lassiter has an arrangement like that, inspired I think by Robert Applegate. This will be my next project; I have two large gravid pituophis that may like that.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
>>I think the closest one could come to mimicking the natural conditions is to have a dual cage system where the top cage is the regular aspen and the bottom section contains the humid dark place for depositing eggs. The two sections are connected by a short length of pvc pipe. John Lassiter has an arrangement like that, inspired I think by Robert Applegate. This will be my next project; I have two large gravid pituophis that may like that.
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I use Applegate enclosures but Frank, Gary Sipperly and others all used them years ago.......
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
Have you heard from Gary, I have lost contact with him, he was always a good friend, and his dad too. Thanks
>>Have you heard from Gary, I have lost contact with him, he was always a good friend, and his dad too. Thanks
I haven't heard from Gary since the late 90s......
and I didn't know his father....
I have some great animals from him. I often wonder what he's up to.
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John Lassiter
Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
...Applegate type cages? I have always liked the idea but am not that handy that I could build one myself. Most cages I see for sale these days are just plastic boxes of various sizes. Any resources anyone may have are appreciated. Thanks.
Rob
>>>>I think the closest one could come to mimicking the natural conditions is to have a dual cage system where the top cage is the regular aspen and the bottom section contains the humid dark place for depositing eggs. The two sections are connected by a short length of pvc pipe. John Lassiter has an arrangement like that, inspired I think by Robert Applegate. This will be my next project; I have two large gravid pituophis that may like that.
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>>
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>>I use Applegate enclosures but Frank, Gary Sipperly and others all used them years ago.......
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>>John Lassiter
>>Poor planning and procrastination on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part...
>>
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I don't know, but I saw the following idea done and thought I'd share:
You know how plastic storage boxes nest in one another? I saw one guy use nested storage boxes to house juvenile kingsnakes. He cut two holes (looks like about 2 inch diameter each) in the bottom of the upper box, laid some paper down in the lower box, then nested the boxes. The snake could fit in the space between the nested boxes. In the upper box he used some aspen and a hide and water bowl. Aspen did fall thru but it was fine.
This is something I will be trying this year but modifying the idea somewhat. Some boxes nest with very little space, some have more. Kings will squeeze into anything though.
You know how plastic storage boxes nest in one another? I saw one guy use nested storage boxes to house juvenile kingsnakes. He cut two holes (looks like about 2 inch diameter each) in the bottom of the upper box, laid some paper down in the lower box, then nested the boxes. The snake could fit in the space between the nested boxes. In the upper box he used some aspen and a hide and water bowl. Aspen did fall thru but it was fine.
That's genius!
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Observing them in a cage by themsleves with set temps and deciding when to feed is hardly natural or healthy for the snakes.
Bluerosy
You are doing what suits you. which is fine, but its not about the animal, its about you. Your requirements.
Frank Retes
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I was the first to do subfloors a very long time ago. But yea, a small cage with a smaller box inside is not the best.
I now use nesting cages, that I put the female in when they go in shed. The top has hiding boards and a water bowl and a small heat source. Then they can and do dig tunnels way down and nest in seclusion. Cheers
Are you currently breeding any pyros?
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
I don't think my wife would be too happy with me if I used one of our dinner plates in the snake cage. The tile on top of moss I can manage.
A couple of years back my female corn didn't want to use the box I provided, so I pile damp moss behind the box, and put a plastic box lid on top. She settled right in.
Last year both of the alterna females used a plastic box with no hesitation.
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Kent
I don't think my wife would be too happy with me if I used one of our dinner plates in the snake cage. The tile on top of moss I can manage.
I reconnoiter thrift stores and yard sales for much of my oddball snake equipment. My reptiles have prettier bowls than the people do!
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
A couple thoughts sprang to mind:
*--It's not uncommon on the field herp forum to find photos of egg clutches under artificial cover or in sawdust piles or rotted trees. In the latter two cases the laying medium would be exposed to rain and I suspect would be very much like the damp sphagnum materials some people use.
*--Deep rocky crevices may well be nesting sites of choice for pyros, but lots of eastern colubrids will never find habitat like that. Maybe they lay in hollows beneath tree stumps, etc. in addition to the types of sites described above.
*--Tiles and plates may be genius. Logically, the idea appeals to me. But we've got to be careful to avoid an observational bias: the snake hasn't laid yet; a new nest site is introduced and she quickly lays there. Because she liked it better? Maybe. Or maybe she simply wasn't ready to lay until the day the alternate site happened to be introduced (and if i read some of these posts correctly, sometimes the conventional site was replaced by a tile/plate and moss, so there wasn't a choice, it just seemed she laid as soon as the switch therefore the switch is responsible for the deposition. (a not too crazy way of looking at this: a woman's in labor (I have a pregnant daughter, so this comes to mind): At the start of labor, the husband sets up a moist sphagnum nest box on the table in the room. Woman struggles with the usual circumstances of labor. Five hours. Ten. Why doesn't the baby come? Then the husband takes the next box out of the room and on the table puts some moist sphagnum under a plate or tile. In less than 30 minutes, the baby is born. Is there a causative relationship?
Point is, you guys are on to some great ideas for consideration here. I hope some of you will run careful tests where both sites are available throughout, for a large number of females of varying species, and record the results (site chosen, days after ecdysis, etc). That would be a great learning experience for us all.
My last breeding with Cals, I used a cage filled with coir, kind of like Frank said about using a "nesting cage". Not a cage with aspen and a box, but just a big cage of dirt (coir) and cover material. Plywood works just fine. I used plywood because it is easy to cut into whatever shapes fit the cage. The cage was heated from above with a ceramic heat emitter. The heat would penetrate the wood enough to warm a snake below, while the humidity under the boards remained.
The above is something you can try to see how your females react. Or maybe, get a big cage and place a big box of coir with your standard plate cover, then do your sphagnum thing in the cage as well and see which see picks. Would be interesting to see what a pyro will do given a choice like that.
Just to be on the safe side I gave my pyros the conventional moss box yesterday, along with the platters and pot lids. So they do have a choice. One of them has decided she likes the old moss box better, spending a lot of time in that. She is closer to actually laying, the other girl is about a week behind.
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
Problem is we all try and make a suitable nesting site or habitat within a small shelvable tupperware box . How about just throwing a bunch of moss, carpet, grit, peat, sand, plastic and tile layers into a garbage can and just cover it. That would work better for the snakes. But it would be hard to clean out any uneaten mice and feces.
So here's a thought..
Just use the ones you have already filled with household trash. Get extra cans and let the week old trash get picked up and just move the snakes into a new containers filled with trash from the previous week.. This way any uneaten mice get thrown away and we have fresh substrate.
Problem solved!
See i always have the answers~
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Observing them in a cage by themsleves with set temps and deciding when to feed is hardly natural or healthy for the snakes.
Bluerosy
You are doing what suits you. which is fine, but its not about the animal, its about you. Your requirements.
Frank Retes
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Where do I start?
First off, uneaten dead mice go bad in hours, not days, so a whole week of a dead mouse would simply reek.
Secondly, it is inevitable that one would forget it is trash pick up day, and the snakes would wind up in the landfill.
Thirdly, finding the eggs in all the trash would be hard, and the eggs would likely get damaged by all the loose debris pressing down on them.
Fourthly, garbage cans are not snake proof, but raccoons would be most interested. Flies also would be attracted because of the aforementioned dead mice.
I could go on but the pain meds I took for my achy back are kicking in and my mind is losing its wit...
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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.
LOL!
j/k
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Observing them in a cage by themsleves with set temps and deciding when to feed is hardly natural or healthy for the snakes.
Bluerosy
You are doing what suits you. which is fine, but its not about the animal, its about you. Your requirements.
Frank Retes
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Well, two several nights ago I had a zonata that was set up with the tile method. She was on day 14. I put in a lay box and left the tile and substrate in there too. She chose the lay box on day 15. It might have been a temperature thing as the lay box was cooler and on top of the tile. Not sure, but she laid 5 good eggs in the lay box.
Joe
