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I was asking about them in another forum and this is the response I got from one guy...and I was wondering how much truth there is to this? He seems like he really knows what he's talking about...I'm just wondering what everyones opinions are here.

Very few bairdis are of color and as you see, most lose pattern as black rats do with age and adulthood. I have seen only few that had the color of your picture and a very few of the longitude stripes that they show in the Texas BIG book of snakes. Of course we are talking captive raised and crossed ? > ( don't know why someone would cross a bairdi for ? ) so yours may be an exception. Still the fact remains that bairdi does not do that well in captivity as a specie. One of the probs , as i said before , is the variety of food intake coming from the rocky areas of observations. Bairdi has been known to accept anything BUT rodents in the wild. There has been some study and I can't really say conclusive at that on certain snakes preying on lizards and other snakes for food source ( some rat snakes and some kingsnakes ) that there is a nay or yay on the mineral source found in lizards not found in rodents. This is one of several reasons I have never considered keeping the wild ones before. Like I said though, this is probably all relevant on your captive bred one..................
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

Battling ignorance one stupid person at a time.

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat(Lola)
1.0 Neonate Black Rat (het for Lic Stk's) (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds ("Bill" and "The Bride aka Beatrix Kiddo" )

>>I was asking about them in another forum and this is the response I got from one guy...and I was wondering how much truth there is to this? He seems like he really knows what he's talking about...I'm just wondering what everyones opinions are here.
>>
>>Very few bairdis are of color and as you see, most lose pattern as black rats do with age and adulthood. I have seen only few that had the color of your picture and a very few of the longitude stripes that they show in the Texas BIG book of snakes. Of course we are talking captive raised and crossed ? > ( don't know why someone would cross a bairdi for ? ) so yours may be an exception. Still the fact remains that bairdi does not do that well in captivity as a specie. One of the probs , as i said before , is the variety of food intake coming from the rocky areas of observations. Bairdi has been known to accept anything BUT rodents in the wild. There has been some study and I can't really say conclusive at that on certain snakes preying on lizards and other snakes for food source ( some rat snakes and some kingsnakes ) that there is a nay or yay on the mineral source found in lizards not found in rodents. This is one of several reasons I have never considered keeping the wild ones before. Like I said though, this is probably all relevant on your captive bred one..................
>>-----

I am not sure what the references to the pictures or colors are, it would have helped if you would have also given the post and picture he was responding to, but anyway Bairdis do great in captivity. Maybe quite a few years back people might have had trouble converting wild caught specimens but they are very hardy snakes with great appetites.
And the statement about "very few bairds are of color"
What?
Have you seen all of these pictures everyone has been posting of bairdis.
They have a lot more color then a casual glance might reveal.
Now, they do loose the neonate patterning but only to blossum into much more striking animals.
I would assume this is still about your baby not eating.
Do you keep trying to feed the poor thing every other day?
You need to give it a little time.
It doesn't mater what you try if you keep trying to rush it.
Give us a list of what you have tried and a true time frame and I bet we could offer some suggestions.
Of course, any advise given is only as good as your willingness to follow it.
Just don't panic, don't pressure the little guy and don't give up on it or us.
One other thing.
The fact that it doesn't want to eat isn't neccessarily a bairdi thing but just an individual snake thing.

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Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"resistance is futile"
Jimmy (draybar)

well i had posted this a few days ago...i cleaned his tank out the other day and i'm waiting a full 7 days before i do anything more than give him more water in his dish...i even set his tank (along with the rest of 'em) on some foam to absorb vibrations. I have tried the "deli cup" with the brained pinky..and just regular thawed pinks...the pet store says they should get a live pink in the end of next week so i'll try him on that next I think.
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

Battling ignorance one stupid person at a time.

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat(Lola)
1.0 Neonate Black Rat (het for Lic Stk's) (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds ("Bill" and "The Bride aka Beatrix Kiddo" )

oh and jimmy the picture was one of sam that you had put on here...i hope you dont mind that i used it...i just wanted a good example
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

Battling ignorance one stupid person at a time.

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat(Lola)
1.0 Neonate Black Rat (het for Lic Stk's) (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds ("Bill" and "The Bride aka Beatrix Kiddo" )

>>oh and jimmy the picture was one of sam that you had put on here...i hope you dont mind that i used it...i just wanted a good example
>>-----

Although I am a bit biased and think Sam is an exceptional bairdi most of the adults I have seen posted have great color like he does. I have also seen a few younger snakes that look like they will turn out with even more color.
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Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"resistance is futile"
Jimmy (draybar)

>>well i had posted this a few days ago...i cleaned his tank out the other day and i'm waiting a full 7 days before i do anything more than give him more water in his dish...i even set his tank (along with the rest of 'em) on some foam to absorb vibrations. I have tried the "deli cup" with the brained pinky..and just regular thawed pinks...the pet store says they should get a live pink in the end of next week so i'll try him on that next I think.
>>-----

Good deal.
I would wait until you get the live pinkie to try anything else.
It won't hurt to wait.
When you try the live pinkie just begin by putting them both in the deli cup and put the deli cup in the tank, turn off the lights and leave it alone for a little while.
Give a couple of hours and then check it.
If it hasn't eaten yet, leave them together over night.
If it still hasn't eaten the live pinkie by the next morning let us know and we can work from there.
-----
Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"resistance is futile"
Jimmy (draybar)

I was asking about them in another forum and this is the response I got from one guy...and I was wondering how much truth there is to this? He seems like he really knows what he's talking about

I'm not sure what led you to the conclusion that the person knew what they were talking about, but here are a few refutations....

Very few bairdis are of color and as you see, most lose pattern as black rats do with age and adulthood.

I guess this could be interpreted as true. Some populations, particularly those from further west, are rather drab as adults. They are still beautiful snakes, but they aren't as pretty as the ones from the eastern areas of their range.

I have seen only few that had the color of your picture and a very few of the longitude stripes that they show in the Texas BIG book of snakes.

Actually, most older adults I have seen had distinctive stripes their whole length (like this WC male from Edwards county, TX). Most pics of captives we see are less than 4 years old and probably just reaching adulthood.

Of course we are talking captive raised and crossed ? > ( don't know why someone would cross a bairdi for ? ) so yours may be an exception.

I have never heard of people crossing bairdi with other species. I have no idea where this person plucked this factoid?

Still the fact remains that bairdi does not do that well in captivity as a specie.

What? That is totally untrue. I have kept somewhere near 100 species of herp, including many dozens of kinds of snakes over the last 30 years and bairdi are about as hardy and easy a captive as any other species. I would argue that they are easier to keep than corn snakes.
Just for the record, the singular of species is species.

One of the probs , as i said before , is the variety of food intake coming from the rocky areas of observations. Bairdi has been known to accept anything BUT rodents in the wild.

Again, interesting incorrect facts. I have actually found a few bairdi that contained meals, and they all contained rodents. I have also collected a few bairdi and kept them and lo and behold, they crap out rodent fur!

There has been some study and I can't really say conclusive at that on certain snakes preying on lizards and other snakes for food source ( some rat snakes and some kingsnakes ) that there is a nay or yay on the mineral source found in lizards not found in rodents. This is one of several reasons I have never considered keeping the wild ones before.

I have a pair of wild caught locality animals as we speak. I have had them for years, and they are healthy and strong and eat rodents readily. And they have eaten rodents since the day I found them.

It shouldn't be that hard to get a baby bairdi eating, in my experience.

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Chris Harrison

Very nice bairdi!
good post also.
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Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"resistance is futile"
Jimmy (draybar)

lol okay..he was full of bull. but it sounded good. lol. I have heard that whole thing on possibly trying a fuzzy...but all the fuzzies i have are at least twice his girth...so maybe just a head? I'm going to try the live pink thing the end of next week...but yeah i have him in a 10 gallon tank, its about 80/86 on the temps...astroturf...4 hiding spots....a bowl of water...2 climbing sticks (which he does use on occasion i'm glad to say). The tank is sitting on a table I have in my bedroom next to a 20 long where my licorice stick lives...I hung a piece of computer paper inbetween the tanks so they cant see each other though (i'm using one heat lamp to do both tanks...seems to work well). Then I cut up some foam I had and the tanks are sitting on that so they shouldnt have much (if any) stress! He has been staying hidden the past couple days all the time.

The only stressful thing is on the 6th (monday) I did force feed him a mouse tail. He took it, didnt regurg it, but hasnt been wanting to see me since then lol. But that day I cleaned his tank out and havent touched it since.
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

Battling ignorance one stupid person at a time.

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat(Lola)
1.0 Neonate Black Rat (het for Lic Stk's) (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds ("Bill" and "The Bride aka Beatrix Kiddo" )

His sister is about 16 inches and she's a little bigger...of course shes also been eating more than he has so i'd guess he's at 14.
-----
The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

Battling ignorance one stupid person at a time.

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat(Lola)
1.0 Neonate Black Rat (het for Lic Stk's) (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds ("Bill" and "The Bride aka Beatrix Kiddo" )

i have him in a 10 gallon tank, its about 80/86 on the temps...

That sounds a little warm to me. I prefer to keep the temps in the 70-80 degree range.

I also never use lights as a source of heat for snakes. I only use undertank heaters attached to rheostats/dimmers to ensure the right temperature.
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Chris Harrison

I had a bunch of blacklight bulbs and fixtures left over from halloween so I figured i'd give it a shot...see how it works...lol. It's worked very well. Everything i've been told and read says 70-80 for adults, 75-85 for babies. I have all the lights hooked up to dimmers, the tanks actually maintain a very consistant temperature. They also have a water bowl to crawl up in if they get too warm (which i've noticed one of my snakes doing. I dropped the temp on that cage about 3 degrees and shes a lot happier).
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

Battling ignorance one stupid person at a time.

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat(Lola)
1.0 Neonate Black Rat (het for Lic Stk's) (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds ("Bill" and "The Bride aka Beatrix Kiddo" )

"Everything i've been told and read says 70-80 for adults, 75-85 for babies."

This sort of thing I see on caresheets here and there doesn't make sense to me. Don't baby snakes of any species generally live in the same range as their parents? Aren't they exposed to the same conditions? Do they magically hatch in some warmer climate, and then migrate back to their parents' home range when they get to a certain age?

Just some food for thought.

Bry

yes they live in the same environment, but then why would i feed babies more often if they get the same amount of food throughtout their life in the wild? Maybe the higher heat is better for them in some weird way. it may help them digest better, and since we are controlling their environments, thats something we can do to help them lead a helathier life....or maybe not. thats just my idea on the thing.
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The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

Battling ignorance one stupid person at a time.

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat(Lola)
1.0 Neonate Black Rat (het for Lic Stk's) (Frankie)
1.1 Texas Bairds ("Bill" and "The Bride aka Beatrix Kiddo" )

This sort of thing I see on caresheets here and there doesn't make sense to me. Don't baby snakes of any species generally live in the same range as their parents? Aren't they exposed to the same conditions? Do they magically hatch in some warmer climate, and then migrate back to their parents' home range when they get to a certain age?

Actually, babies do experience the environment differently than adults. First of all, snakes monitor/maintain adequate temperatures for metabolic activity by behavioral thermoregulation. This means they shuttle from the sun to the shade to underground to keep their body temperatures in an acceptible range. Therefore although babies and adults live in the same area, they can behaviorally expose themselves to different ambient temperatures throughout the day.

Same thing is true of humans - small individuals heat up and cool down quicker. It is a principle of geometry.
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Chris Harrison

Babies hatch out in the spring or summer, therefore their bodies are programmed to recieve a slightly higher temp for the first few months of life.

Bryan
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Last night I was laying in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and I thought to myself, "Where the hell is my ceiling?"

wild populations and my opinions of years back. Some of you guys should know me or remember me ( no, not trying to get a enlarged head by that ). I haven't been on these other forums for awhile other than the alterna forum, but.....since I have been away from the mainstream of the captive breeding of some of these rat snakes ( not corn snake family though ) I will repeat myself and didn't know that E. bairdi ( or is it B. bairdi now ? ) was hybridize and still don't see the reason ( but that's for the hybrid forum ? ). While the content of books and personal experience still states the main food intake is of lizards and other come from the same habitat type food, it is suggested that in the wild , rodents are not consumed as a main diet exclusively. My own self research is of 20 some years ago and I haven't done anymore with it since. My allude ( saying it right ? ) was to the oringinal poster on another fourm to why the snake was not eating or interested in eating and maybe I didn't read farther. That may come with old age and could be my problem ! LOL ! I stand corrected and apologize.

Mike Chambers ( formerly the fact and number guy and Chambo )

Mike -
We've come so far with bairds rat snakes in such a short time. Texas bairds habitat is generally rocky areas. They inhabit the crevices waiting to ambush and looking for crevice lizards to feed on. This would lend itself to think that they would not readily feed on mice. This may have been the case with the first collected bairds and the fact that they were probably fed lizards. Amazingly, bairds will feed on mice readily. This is one of the points to their growth in popularity to breeders and pet hobbyists. Snakes that are primarily lizard eaters, like the lyre snake, can be difficult to switch to mice and some never do. If you were answering the post wuth the experience and facts of a decade or two ago, then that was probably the case. Bairds for some reason were thought of as drab and bland. Like Chris mentioned, it's most likely in reference to most of the western range populations. The baird that won't eat a pinkie may want a lizard for that matter. The pinkie could at least be scented with a gecko. Geckos seem to be the trick for scenting pinkies to get difficult lyre snakes switched over to mice. It sure works for me and the lyres that are switching over.
Take some time on this forum Mike and see some of the nice bairds that are being captive bred. You'll be pleasantly surprised I'm sure. Here's a pic to start you with.

Terry Parks

>>wild populations and my opinions of years back. Some of you guys should know me or remember me ( no, not trying to get a enlarged head by that ). I haven't been on these other forums for awhile other than the alterna forum, but.....since I have been away from the mainstream of the captive breeding of some of these rat snakes ( not corn snake family though ) I will repeat myself and didn't know that E. bairdi ( or is it B. bairdi now ? ) was hybridize and still don't see the reason ( but that's for the hybrid forum ? ). While the content of books and personal experience still states the main food intake is of lizards and other come from the same habitat type food, it is suggested that in the wild , rodents are not consumed as a main diet exclusively. My own self research is of 20 some years ago and I haven't done anymore with it since. My allude ( saying it right ? ) was to the oringinal poster on another fourm to why the snake was not eating or interested in eating and maybe I didn't read farther. That may come with old age and could be my problem ! LOL ! I stand corrected and apologize.
>>

20 years makes a big difference...lol
I still don't understand why you mention hybrids and hybridization in relation to bairdis?
They aren't being hybridized.
Apparently he posted a picture of my male bairdi, Sam, in the post you responded to.
Sam is a Texas Bairdi. He is definitely not a hybrid.

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Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"resistance is futile"
Jimmy (draybar)

Hi Chris -
I would have thought you had seen a baird hybrid or two. Here's the result of crossing a Texas baird to a Florida cornsnake.

Terry Parks

How do they turn out? I imagine they're pretty variable, the only one I've ever seen was a bairds/kisatchee corn. It had nice silver coloration like a bairds, but the underlying coloration was brown and gray like the parent corn instead of yellow or orange like a normal bairds. I'd imagine some like that might turn out pretty nice looking.

Hi Kevin -
They are really variable. They go to both sides of the spectrum. Some lean towards corns and some lean towards Texas bairds.

Terry Parks

>>Hi Chris -
>> I would have thought you had seen a baird hybrid or two. Here's the result of crossing a Texas baird to a Florida cornsnake.
>>
>>Terry Parks
>>

Terry,
I didn't know you were mixing bairdis and corns.
And I just said they weren't being hybridized...lol.
Oh well.
Have you bred them to anything else?
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Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"resistance is futile"
Jimmy (draybar)

Jimmy -
I didn't produce the hybrid. The hybrid in the pic is a 03'CB that was produced by a pair of 95'CB (Florida cornsnake x Texas baird rat snake). Supposedly the original cross breeding in 1995 occured by accident. It was the discovery that the female cornsnake and female Texas baird turned out that one was a male. I never put two or more snakes together except when I'm breeding them. I don't put females together during brumation to save space. Can you imagine putting 6 female snakes together to brumate them and finding out one was a male. Guess what if you put a male snake together with a female snake of the same subspecies or similar they will breed. They've been doing it for millions of years. The breeder didn't know what to do with the hybrids and ended up giving them away. A friend of mine picked up a pair of these in 1995. He wasn't going to breed them I believe, but last year he got the urge and bred the pair. I received a trio and was interested in seeing them and working with them. I posted a the pic I posted here on the hybrid forum. Someone responded that they really liked them and had a pair of the Baird X corn hybrid several years before, but had gotten rid of them. He wanted to have them again so I shipped them to him. Sorry, but I only have the picture on my computer and no hybrids in my collection.
Chris Harrison disagrees with me on the extent that it happens, but bairds and Texas rat snakes integrade in zones where their range overlaps.

Terry Parks

>>Jimmy -
>> I didn't produce the hybrid. The hybrid in the pic is a 03'CB that was produced by a pair of 95'CB (Florida cornsnake x Texas baird rat snake). Supposedly the original cross breeding in 1995 occured by accident. It was the discovery that the female cornsnake and female Texas baird turned out that one was a male. I never put two or more snakes together except when I'm breeding them. I don't put females together during brumation to save space. Can you imagine putting 6 female snakes together to brumate them and finding out one was a male. Guess what if you put a male snake together with a female snake of the same subspecies or similar they will breed. They've been doing it for millions of years. The breeder didn't know what to do with the hybrids and ended up giving them away. A friend of mine picked up a pair of these in 1995. He wasn't going to breed them I believe, but last year he got the urge and bred the pair. I received a trio and was interested in seeing them and working with them. I posted a the pic I posted here on the hybrid forum. Someone responded that they really liked them and had a pair of the Baird X corn hybrid several years before, but had gotten rid of them. He wanted to have them again so I shipped them to him. Sorry, but I only have the picture on my computer and no hybrids in my collection.
>> Chris Harrison disagrees with me on the extent that it happens, but bairds and Texas rat snakes integrade in zones where their range overlaps.
>>
>>Terry Parks
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Corn snakes and rat snakes..No one can have just one.
"resistance is futile"
Jimmy (draybar)