Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I felt that perhaps this gal belonged to this forum since they grow about the size of a regal ringneck? lol. She is about to shoot out them eggs. I have a catchers mit ready.

Dan

Very nice photo, nice snake too. You sure have a nice collection of snakes. Please keep up your good work and post more of your beautiful snake photo for us to enjoy.

I lived in Indonesia several years ago and visited several of the islands. I was looking for komodo dragons but could not find them. I crouched down to think about a better strategy to find one, and my friend took this pic.

Dan

She looks big Dan. My adult cali king female looks HUGE, she's going through her egg laying shed right now, time to set up the egg boxes again...

Good luck withe the longnoses, you ever breed them before?

Mike
Michael's Place

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Yea, I had a colony of them many years ago and they breed well.

Dan

I thought they got big like 4 or 5 feet? The ones you had did they eat baby mice or only lizards?
They are nice you dont see them much. I have an old book my grand father gave me about desert reptiles as pets and it saids they are hard to keep because stubborn lizard eaters but granted its an old book.

I would say half of the wild caughts eat lizards and the other half will take rodents. Even a lizard eating longnose will take rodents with scenting. All you have to do is use a small enough rodent like a pink and scent it with a lizard and leave it with the snake for a day or so and also do not feed the snake for two weeks and they usually convert to rodents.

Dan

Can longnose snakes be housed in m/f pair in large enough enclosure or possible snake eaters?
Do you find them fairly active or for the most part similiar to CA king as far as behaviour goes?
Thanks

I have not witnessed them eating each other, but would not put it totally out of the question. They eat smaller food items and amounts than cal kings and are a bit more nervous when handled as compared to a cal king, but they do not try to eat your fingers like a cal king.

I used to have a wide flat box that slid under my bed that always had some 18-20 longnose in it of all different colors and phases (I don't even know if there were possession limits back then or not, I wsn't aware of any). I was carefull to feed everybody at once and supervised till all were done eating, but I never once had any trouble with any snakes trying to eat another. Of course it doesn't mean it can't happen but I think you would be pretty safe. However if you plan on breeding them you will get better results keeping them separate and then introducing them at breeding time. You could keep a couple of females in one cage and the male separate except for spring breeding.

a friend of mine had two of similar size in an enclosure and one ate the other. However he was insisting that they eat mice which they were very reluctant to do. They would each accept about one mouse a month when they finally got hungry enough. After about eight months one of them finally got REAL hungry! It probably wouldn't have happened if hed just given in and given them lizards and kept them well fed.

oh wow you certainly enjoyed collecting them. From the book I have "North American reptiles" there seems to be 2 color types one that is black/white the other black/red/white do you find this to be the case?
thanks

The "clarus phase" (which is what Oxyropus has pictured above)and the "leconte phase" which tend to have square red saddles between the black blotches and an overall much more speckled appearance. The classic "clarus" would be just black and white with no red, but most do have a little orange or red shading. Many clarus phase snakes can have intense red shading making them look much like R.l.antonii from Mexico (see Regal Ringnecks post on the Field Observations forum) You will find most specimens fall somewhere in btween teh two color morphs and that the sky is the limit. Thats why I had so many as a kid. I actually kept only a very small portion of the longnoses that I found, but they were all unusual or extreme color variations.

Are they that hardy that they did well under your bed with no extra heat?
I am considering a pair for a 30 gallon long tank .

They probably stayed in the mid to low eighties under the bed. They did prove very hardy though. I fed them exclusively lizards back in those day. In fact I used to provide for around 100 snakes with nothing but my hands, a BB gun and a bow and arrow. That was back when Tucson was little though.