Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I came to this forum about 2 months ago when I rescued a tiny red-tail green rat from the petstore. It is doing great, eating a large fuzzy/hopper every week, took it's first dead one yesterday, has the attitude from hell already, and seems to be thriving in an enclosure on top of my Peach throat's cage by my computer. It gets to look down on a lot of activity everyday, but is active and does not display it's attitude unless I have to move it's cage or try to handle he/she( only three times so far). Who else is working with these snakes? I got some great advice last time I posted. I have always been fascinated by this species and feel I finally have a healthy, feeding, young specimen. I would like to pair it up. Any help or advice is appreciated.

I've not probed all my specimens but I think the ratio is 4.5.

They are fantastic snakes but they can arrive in horrible condition. All of mine are imports except for one yearling produced by Ben Siegal (I think his URL is albinonile.com). He's who'd I'd stay in touch with if you want to pair yours up.

Wild caughts can be frustrating snakes. I have 5 imports that I feel are fully established, wormed, etc., and they are thriving. I've had others die within a week. I've had others that seemed to be doing fine but then died during a bad shed cycle. Given that bad sheds are rare I suspect there was something wrong that I simply was unable to catch. So I don't think it was the bad shed that killed them per se.

Breeding is faily straightforward. One of my pairs copulated last winter and the female produced fertile eggs for at least 7 months. Unfortunately I lost all my records in a flood so I can't be certain. I also lost the eggs due a move and the aformentioned flood so I can't comment much on egg incubation.

Honestly, these snakes thrive in a variety of cages. I know they've even been bred in standard 28 qt. rubbermaids with no climbing perches. I don't know how in the heck the breeder got them back in the boxes everytime (these snakes are very squirly as adults) but I'm not at all surprised to hear they thrived in such conditions.

My specimens vary greatly in whether or not they will climb. Some will spend at least part of every day on perches while others never come out of their hide boxes. I've even sprinkled loose mulch on the perches to see if they climb over it at night and some never did.

I'm working on a cage design for this species and have decided to offer just over 1.5' of cage height but then have a floor area of just over 2' x 2'. If I were keeping my snakes in pairs or trios I'd offer them more space.

On that same note, my group also varies greatly in how vigorous they feed. Some feed off of forceps even if I'm not standing very still. Others will only eat off of the cage floor or perches after I leave the room. Others feed only at night. Also, some of my snakes won't feed if removed and placed in a separate feeding container - which is what I'd prefer to do if they would.

All of these variances cause me to keep my specimens separately so I can keep track of how much they feed. I know of a few breeders who feed multiple specimens in the same cage and have not had any feeding accidents, but I'm not yet willing to take that step.

My breeder male is my most "shy" specimen but he was still willing to copulate with the female even though I was removing him every 10 days for a short period of rest and feeding. I think I'll stay with that protocol when I get back to attempting breeding.

This species does not get discussed on this forum as much as I would like. Maybe it's because they're not really ratsnakes. Regardless, I hope you get a lot of responses.

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I came to this forum about 2 months ago when I rescued a tiny red-tail green rat from the petstore. It is doing great, eating a large fuzzy/hopper every week, took it's first dead one yesterday, has the attitude from hell already, and seems to be thriving in an enclosure on top of my Peach throat's cage by my computer. It gets to look down on a lot of activity everyday, but is active and does not display it's attitude unless I have to move it's cage or try to handle he/she( only three times so far). Who else is working with these snakes? I got some great advice last time I posted. I have always been fascinated by this species and feel I finally have a healthy, feeding, young specimen. I would like to pair it up. Any help or advice is appreciated.