Share your Advanced Practices!

[satomi325]

Quarantine

6 months in a totally separate room. Vents are close and sealed to avoid cross contamination by central ventilation system.
I work with my resident animals first. I clean, handle, maintain, and feed the residents then work on quarantine animals after.
Feeders are bred by myself so if a QT animal does not eat, the live feeder stays in the QT room in it's own tub set up to be saved for another day or fed off immediately to my ferrets. That feeder does not go back to the colony to avoid cross contamination to the other feeders that would be fed off to the resident animals.

Hot Spot and Ambient Temperatures

Winter:
88-90 hot spot.
70-75 ambient

Summer:
88-90 hotspot
80 ambient

Hides or No Hides

Hides to all hatchlings and picky juveniles.
Adults do not get any hides. The enclosed rack acts like a giant hide itself.

Planted/Living Vivariums and Displays

None yet

Co-habitation

Yes. For breeding purposes.

No, for non breeding purposes. However, I have done so on purpose in the past.
Due to the whole "can't-co-habitation" committee, I decided to house 2 females of the same age and initial size together for a year as a personal experiment.
I kept the same routine as my other snakes. I qt, fed, watered, cleaned after the two girls the same. I am an advocate for not feeding in a separate feeding bin, so I used a barrier divider to keep feedings separate without physically removing the snakes from their enclosure. No health or behavior issues ever arose. One female eventually outgrew the other female by 500 grams, so I decided to end their cohabitation.

Breeding

Enclosure temps: 90 hot spot, 70-80 ambient (depending on season)
Cool down: I don’t do designated cool downs. The ambient temperature may change depending on the seasonal room temp. But in general, I find that cool downs are an unnecessary extra step that could potentially result in RIs.
Enclosure substrate: Newspaper
Side note: I do not provided water bowls or hides in breeding tubs.
Humidity: ~ 60%
Lighting: Increased darkness that correlates with natural daylight in Winter here in Northern CA.
Breeding intervals: I pair snakes for 4 days. Then I separate them back into their own tubs for 4-7 days in order to recuperate and feed, then I pair them again for another 4 days, and so on and so forth. Parings will continue until the female ovulates.
Feeding Status: All adults are fed live small rats. The big girls are fed multiple smalls. Nobody has gone off feed yet. I will continue to feed my breeding snakes as long as they want to eat.

Assist/Force Feeding

Just to jump start slow starters or when a hatchling looks deathly thin

Incubation (maternal vs. incubator)

Incubator - I want as much control over my eggs. Keeping the conditions in the female tub perfect is more difficult. There is more variability in environmental factors when maternally incubating.

Temps: 88
Humidity: 99-100%
Incubation medium: Equal weight of water:perllite

Live and F/T Feeding

Live

Substrate

Newspaper

Lighting

Natural room/window lighting