Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I get so frustrated by these damn snakes.

I think that I'm going to start line breeding for those that are neat. Some of my snakes always poop in the same spot (away from their hide) and leave the substrate alone. They are easy. Others poop everywhere, all over the water bowl, hide, etc, and completely destroy whatever substrate I'm using.

The messy ones need to be bred out of existence...

I have been having thoughts along similar lines. I currently only have 1.1 yearling baja mountain kings, So my line breeding potential is non-existant now. But I was thinking that maybe small lizard eating species could be line bred favoring those that take unscented mice first. Eventually the breeder might get a population that does not require any tricks to get them feeding on mice. The converse would be to also breed the most strident lizard only feeders (offer mice every time, but record the number of rejections) and see if you could breed lizard only eaters.

Pooping away from the dish would be a great first step in having true domesticated snakes. great idea, i would have never thought of it.

I would love to hear other ideas for non coloration related line breeding, or if anybody is currently doing something like that.

I think a good model for this sort of line breeding would be the fox breeding program they had in russia. There was a PBS show about it a few years back. They were breeding foxes for docile domestic qualities, and had another line that they were breeding for ferocious qualities. Just selecting for temperment had a large effect on visual phenotype also.

Most of mine seem to be line bred for begging for food.They literally follow me back and forth along their cages. One is water dish trained... poops in the water dish every time.

My pits all get nest tubs with paper towels to sleep in, but they also routinely use them as toilets. Most convenient to just change out the little tub, and really saves on aspen. My pyros can have moist sphagnum moss nest tubs (moss is expensive!), since they prefer to poop at the far corners of their cage as far from their sleeping area as possible.

Line breeding for behavior is an interesting concept.
I have had litters of cats that all were either very tidy or were terrible nasty poopers and pissers. Like it was genetic how they behaved toilet wise. with my snakes all my pits tend to like their "toilets" even though they are not all related.

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Bob
Pyromaniac AKA Greatballzofire
Keeping cats allows man to cohabitate with tigers. Keeping reptiles allows man to cohabitate with dinosaurs.