Steve's Snake Observations

[guidofatherof5]

Yesterday, LG gave birth to her babies. The night before delivering she was restless.
Going from the cold side to the hot side up in the vines all over the enclosure. From that I knew she was close to delivering.
The thing that really caught my eye was that during the last week she's had a shadow. My girl Shade was always with her when she was just sitting. None of the other snakes were hanging around her. If she was in the cold hide, Shade was right next to her. Same in the hot hide. While LG gave birth, Shade was close by but none of the other snakes were. When I would take a baby out Shade would come over and see what I was doing. She'd come up and smell my hand and the baby.
It was probably some hormone from LG or the smell of birth, I don't know. Shade was never aggressive towards LG or anything weird/strange.
It was almost as if Shade was looking out for LG.
Maybe Shade was playing midwife.
These snakes are always doing something to spark my interest.

[ConcinusMan]

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the snakes you named. What are they? where's the pics?

[guidofatherof5]

These are adult T.radixes females. Can't post any photos as the forum must still be on backup server. Sorry.

[ConcinusMan]

I've been saying it all along. You won't have any problems if you'll just use imageshack and hotlink the images to your posts here.

But that's OK Steve, we can wait.

The only odd behavior I saw when my girls were about to give birth was that I had to take the males out. Stupid boys kept trying to mate with the girls while they were giving birth.

[guidofatherof5]

Christmas morning(4am) I was in the big snake room. I had fed a couple individual young radixes a few baby night crawlers.
I then got into a big enclosure(females) to wish me girls a Merry Christmas. LG came up to me and started mouthing my finger that still had worm scent on it. Since I ignored her she turned it up a notch and did a full open mouth bite. She didn't sink her teeth and simply looked at me to see if she'd caught my attention yet. I continued to ignore her and she gave up. She worked her mouth off but apparently had a cramp in her jaw. I cracked up as she tried to close her mouth but couldn't.
She flexed her lower lips, twisted her head and finally closed her mouth. She looked so pathetic. It gave me a good laugh to start the day off.

[ConcinusMan]

I see my big adults do that a lot. Their "lips" get displaced and when they try to close their mouths, they get the funniest look on their faces and have to adjust everything so it lines up properly, and try again. That happened just the other day with the biggest girl. (an adult mouse is nowhere near too big for her) She's usually very careful about not biting me but she must have been really hungry. She hauled off and missed the food entirely and struck my thumb instead. She's really big so the teeth sank right in, drawing blood. It took some doing to get her teeth backed out. When she was loose, she looked at me with misaligned lips and couldn't close her mouth properly. I couldn't help but to laugh out loud even though I was bleeding.

[guidofatherof5]

Here's one:
Tonight I was feeding a a group of Radixes. In the enclosure is Boomerang, Honda, and Mr. Mansley. The rest of the residence of this enclosure are in the fridge(Nova, VP) Boomerang was out to see me(begging). I've always loved this girl for many reasons. She's docile, big and red. I've always wanted her to breed but she never has. Even with Mr. Mansley around 24/7.
As more of a joke I looked at Mr. Mansley and told him his problem might just be he has no competition. I then went to another enclosure housing a great looking mature red phase radix male. I was saving him for Nova but decided to put him in the game right now. I removed him and into the other enclosure he went.
Like a duck on a June bug he went for Boomerang. He's courting her as I type. I think I will be up late this night waiting to see if there's a lockup.
What's interesting is the fact Mr. Mansley showed no interest in her at all.
.
.
.
I took a few moments to check on them. The new man is now courting Honda. He can't seem to make up his mind. They both must smell pretty good.
Mr. Mansley is a proven breeder but must be taking a sabbatical.

[ConcinusMan]

It's funny, the timing of you telling us this. I have an anery male that has been courting one of the anery females for more than a day now. No other males are interested in her in the least bit. This is a first for me. Very odd.

[guidofatherof5]

Here's my Boom and Redman.
I think they might make some hot babies.

[ConcinusMan]

As if this snake isn't hot enough, picture it as an albino! You did let that "busy" WC albino male mate with some red girls didn't you?

I would like to see more of these produced in the coming years. Might even get that chance myself in a couple of more years.



Well, lesson learned. I guess that just because a female isn't attracting other males doesn't mean you can't get them to breed by trying other males.