jmonahan
10-24-2014, 08:08 PM
By way of introduction, here's the story ...
We live in a 100 year old farm house in central Iowa, central USA. Snakes seem to migrate to our house and garage and root cellar to hibernate in the fall. Last year we found a number of them in our basement and ended up taking care of them through the winter until it was warm enough to release them in the spring.
We built 2 hibernaculums (sp?) and hope to encourage the snakes to use them rather than our basement. We laid out cover - roofing tin, asphalt shingles and boards, and checked them regularly this fall as the snakes started moving. There were actually more snakes than I really expected, and I've been catching / keeping snakes for a lot of years. Once, under a piece of tin about 2 meters by 1/2 meter (roughly 6ft x 2ft) we found 12 snakes! (Fox snakes, brown snakes, sirtalis and radix). In all we found hundreds of snakes in a relatively small area around our house.
Most we left alone, some we moved to our artificial hibernaculums, and a couple, well actually 5, we decided to keep. See, a small percent of the red-sided garters around here are "light" colored. Their background coloration is tan, rather than dark brown or black, the lateral red extends all the way down their bodies, and their yellow stripe are a little wider than the majority. I have always been curious about this so decided to keep a few of this variation to breed.
So here's the question ...
I want to beef up the breeders a little before I hibernate them, which is encroaching on the hibernation period. I plan to hibernate them in our root cellar, which will be between 40-50F and near 100% humidity. How long does Thamnophis need to be hibernated? Does the duration of hibernation and/or temps reflect in the fecundity of the breeders?
I'm wondering if, for instance, I can put them down in early December and bring them back out in early March and expect them to breed normally?
Thanks all -
joe
We live in a 100 year old farm house in central Iowa, central USA. Snakes seem to migrate to our house and garage and root cellar to hibernate in the fall. Last year we found a number of them in our basement and ended up taking care of them through the winter until it was warm enough to release them in the spring.
We built 2 hibernaculums (sp?) and hope to encourage the snakes to use them rather than our basement. We laid out cover - roofing tin, asphalt shingles and boards, and checked them regularly this fall as the snakes started moving. There were actually more snakes than I really expected, and I've been catching / keeping snakes for a lot of years. Once, under a piece of tin about 2 meters by 1/2 meter (roughly 6ft x 2ft) we found 12 snakes! (Fox snakes, brown snakes, sirtalis and radix). In all we found hundreds of snakes in a relatively small area around our house.
Most we left alone, some we moved to our artificial hibernaculums, and a couple, well actually 5, we decided to keep. See, a small percent of the red-sided garters around here are "light" colored. Their background coloration is tan, rather than dark brown or black, the lateral red extends all the way down their bodies, and their yellow stripe are a little wider than the majority. I have always been curious about this so decided to keep a few of this variation to breed.
So here's the question ...
I want to beef up the breeders a little before I hibernate them, which is encroaching on the hibernation period. I plan to hibernate them in our root cellar, which will be between 40-50F and near 100% humidity. How long does Thamnophis need to be hibernated? Does the duration of hibernation and/or temps reflect in the fecundity of the breeders?
I'm wondering if, for instance, I can put them down in early December and bring them back out in early March and expect them to breed normally?
Thanks all -
joe