Welcome to the breeding diaries.

Sharing information.

The idea for the breeding diaries pages for this web site began several years ago. I wanted a place on the web site to share breeding information from my own successful breeding's. I think it is important, especially with less commonly bred species, that breeders share accurate information in order to help other potential breeders have success in the propagation of these amazing reptiles. As with the rest of this web site I hope that some will find the information here useful.

All the information provided here will be from my own personal records and experiences of species that I have successfully bred.

On this page I will provide general information that I think is relevant to breeding success from my own collection. Species specific information can be found on the individual species diary pages. (Links at the bottom of this page.)

Your animals.

An important factor (in my opinion) is that apart from a couple of snakes, all the animals in my collection were obtained as juveniles, ranging from between a couple of months old and two years of age when I obtained them, with the majority being under a year old. I believe that obtaining young animals gives them time to cycle to the rooms annual rhythms as well as to the keepers nuances over a number of years whilst they are maturing.

Obtaining young animals gives the keeper the opportunity to have a complete understanding of their history, such as feeding, growth, health and individual behaviour/personality by the time they reach sexual maturity.
For example, female pythons will show slightly different behaviours when developing follicles to their normal behaviour. If you as the keeper have a good understanding of your animals "normal" behaviour you are more likely to see when it's time to pair animals up rather than taking a rough guess.

By obtaining young animals I have been able to grow all my animals slowly with a view to getting females to five years or older, depending on species, before attempting to breed any of them.

The importance of food.

I now believe that food cycling plays a much larger role in reproduction than some other stimuli with certain python species, based on some personal observations over the last decade. I believe that it is actually food cycling in combination with temperature, humidity and light cycles, that induce some species to begin follicle development and so I think food plays a vital role in breeding some of these species.

To me it seems possible that some species have evolved with the stimulus to breed when there is an abundance of prey to feed on and to feed any young that are produced rather than the actual weather cycles themselves. This abundance of prey is dependant on the annual weather cycle in the snakes natural habitat. Combining food cycling at the same time as manipulating other parameters gives the best chance for positive outcomes in any breeding trials in my opinion.

I cycle feed all animals in my collection other than young animals under two years of age, even if I don't intend to breed the older animals. In other words, all animals in my collection over to years old are cycle fed every year.

I feed sparingly throughout the summer, feeding generally around 5% to 10%-15% of the snakes body weight per meal at around three week intervals depending on the individuals condition.
For example females that have laid a clutch of eggs the previous season will maybe get 15% whereas a male might only get 5%.

In late summer (mid August through September) I increase the females feeding slightly. Depending on the specific female and her condition this may be by offering a couple of meals of slightly larger prey (15%) with maybe a two week interval, or by offering smaller meals 5% or 10% at weekly intervals, or a combination of both.
Males I tend to keep on the same three week intervals throughout the summer as I think, males are triggered to breed by females releasing pheromones rather than other stimuli.

In October I will reduce the size of meals for both males and females giving the last small prey item <5% body weight around mid October. This allows two weeks before I start cooling night temperatures for the snakes to digest the last meal and potentially clean out their system. Generally I do not offer food throughout November, December or January to any animals. That being said, depending on species there maybe occasions where small meals are offered to certain animals.

In February after night temperatures have risen again I will feed a smaller than usual meal to females that have not been breeding and are interested in food as a first meal and then again feed quite large prey a week or two later for a couple of meals. If this doesn't induce follicle development or if no breeding has been observed by the end of March I resume summer feeding schedules for the females.

With males that will take food I start getting them onto a summer feeding schedule again in March. Often males that are breeding will not show an interest in food at this time.

I believe that with the females of some species (such as white lipped pythons) it is the provision of these larger than normal and or more frequent meals that trigger a reproductive cycle. There is more information on the white lipped python breeding diary to help support this theory.

Egg incubation.

I incubate all my python eggs at the same temperatures and using the same method.
I incubate all my eggs on a vermiculite substrate. This worked for me with good results in the 1990's hatching python eggs and so I still use this method. I have built a converted wine cooler incubator.

The incubator is heated with heat cable running from a pulse proportional thermostat. The cable sites on the back wall and has a perspex screen in front of it with a 12cm gap at the top. At the bottom of the perspex is a computer fan that draws the air down from the top of the incubator, over the heat cable and blows it out at the bottom of the incubator. There is also a large water container at the bottom of the incubator that serves to keep the heat stable should the power go off for a few hours and also keeps the general humidity in the incubator high.

I run the incubator at between 30C and 31C, aiming for 30.5C (86F - 87F) and the probe sits in the incubator just in front of the fan rather than in an egg box. This seems to provide a very stable environment with evenly distributed heat throughout the incubator. Over the last decade this has given excellent results with high percentage hatch rates of viable eggs. There is more information in the individual species diary pages. (links at the bottom of the page).