![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Snakey stuff....
So I was doing my usual daily check on my ophidian offspring this evening, and thought I'd have a bit of a ramble about them on here. Especially since my desktop has died along with all my snake records. *Sigh*
So I started with the four small boxes, and my smallest, youngest snake.
Long is a snow corn. I did think (from various physical cues) that the little non-feeding hatchling that was heading for being culled was a male, hence the name... but as time passes I'm beginning to think that he is, in fact, a she! When I took her on, she was very thin and so her tail had the appearance of being longer and thicker (in relation to her body - than it was. As she's put weight on and grown, however, it looks more and more like the narrowed, shorter tail of a little girl.
I have to probe her to be sure, but I think dear Long is female.
Anyway, she's a pretty little thing; she has a delicate head, very well shaped without the 'bulging' eyes that some of the snows can sometimes show. She has pale eyes, and I suspect that she'll develop more pinks as she grows; she could even be what's known as a 'bubblegum' snow. (Pinks, whites and yellows.)
Anyway, temperament is typical corn, laid back and friendly, calm. Although perhaps that's the karma of naming....
Magpie is a black rat snake - another non-feeder that had been heading for being a cull before coming home with me! He's still got his juvenile blotches, but he's beginning to show some of the potential he'll have as an adult; amber eyes, good shaped head, white chin leading down to an unmarked throat, deep body. He's also a typical rat snake, temperament wise - in that as soon as I reach to pick him up he opens his mouth to warn me off, but has never (to date) followed it up with a bite. Once you pick him up he settles down and, although highly strung like almost all of the rat snakes, is easy to handle.
Eats like a pig, too, which is good for a baby. With every shed he changes colour a little more, and I'm really looking forward to watching his adult colours develop. He's a nice little chap, and all the handling is certainly keeping him easy.
Sally is a yellow rat snake, and the intended of my own dear Sam The Bastard... but I suspect that her early history may not allow that. She hasn't grown as well as I'd hoped, and it's always possible that the year and a half she spent hiding under a rock in fear of the adult male rat snakes she shared her viv with has permanently stunted her growth.
She may never grow to be large enough to breed from; if that's the case then she'll have a comfortable life here, with her own viv where she doesn't have to hide from anyone or anything.
Of course, being a yellow she's more than a little neurotic, and although not a biter she will grab on to you with her tail and empty her anal glands, which smells something like burning rubber. Then she relaxes (although always with an eye on doing a bunk), but by then you already smell bad.
She's assuming her adult colours, losing the brownish blotches to get the four stripes typical of an adult yellow rat...and we shall see what the next year brings.
Rosie is the biggest of all the 'smalls', and is my white-sided black rat snake. I'm hoping to breed her with Magpie for either the 2009 or 2010 season; he carries the gene for albino, and it'll be interesting to see how (or even if) it interacts with the gene that produces the white siding effect. Unless I can get hold of a male white sided or leucistic, of course....
It's interesting to compare the temperament of the different rat snakes; all of mine are the same species (Elaphe obsoletus), but two different subspecies (Elaphe obsoletus quadrovittata, the yellow rat snake, and Elaphe obsoletus obsoletus, the black rat snake). Blacks are renowned for being the easiest of all the obsoletus complex, as well as perhaps the largest. If someone wants to start with American rat snakes, the blacks are probably the best place to start; still rather jumpy but rarely biters, on the whole as long as their needs are met they'll stay in their viv and behave themselves.
Unlike the yellows, who are not only neurotic and uptight but are often biters and - from what i can find from other people I've met who keep yellows - consummate escape artists. Certainly Sally and Sam are the only two I've ever had real problems with when it comes to jailbreaks!
I shall have to try and get some decent pictures of Rosie - she's really gorgeous.
Sam The Bastard is - you will all be glad to hear! - in ridiculously fine health. He is, at nine years old, well into middle age, although you would never know it to look at him. After his seven week sojourn loose in my car he's feeding well and in fine, feisty form; he's already bitten me a couple of times when I've had him out to handle, although it's more a nervous strike before he settles and realises that he's not going to be hurt than it is a serious, aggressive attack.
The other interesting thing about the yellow rats is that when you walk into the bedroom, two heads are guaranteed to be poked out and pointed toward you: Sam and Sally. They are always aware of what's going on around them, and tend to position themselves where they can scan the whole room without having to come out in the open.
Sam amuses me; he's one solid bar of muscle, eats well and seems to think that life is something to be attacked and subdued, rather than enjoyed! He is, at the end of the day, one heck of a character - partly why I would like to breed from him. He might be a little shit, but you can't let a personality like that just fade away, can you?
Roo and Rohypnol the royal pythons are growing well, hale and hearty. Roo, the male, will eat anything waved in front of him and cheerfully stuffs down quite large rats; Rohyp, on the other hand, is a little more shy but will scoff down mice until the cows come home. But only white ones; colour bias is surprisingly common amongst snakes, and very common indeed amongst royals. Some will only eat white mice or rats, some only coloured, some only hoodeds; some have a preference for chicks, others will only eat gerbils, or hamsters, or quail!
Tyson, Noodle and Lucy the corn snakes are all bonking madly in response to the longer days, eating and shedding like there's no tomorrow and hopefully we should get some eggs soon-ish. They're all in superb body condition and although Lucy is a little smaller than I would like for breeding, she double clutched last year and is doing very well indeed with me so far.
Oli came out for a while earlier, downstairs to watch TV with us! He's growing like a weed (as Burmese pythons do in their first year), and has just topped three feet long; considering he was barely a foot and a half when I brought him home in November that's quite some growth! He's gorgeous, and although he can be a little hissy at times (he's a chatty little man, our Oli) - especially when he's hungry - he's overall very good natured. Good job too, considering how big he's going to get!
Zico. Ah, my dear, feisty boy! By lunging at Slay to warn him away from his viv - our lad is very territorial of his house - he's banged his nose up a bit, and also seems to have some sort of lump on his forehead. I suspect some kind of abscess; usually you get them when viv hygiene is not all it could be, but that boy is mucked out weekly and he's very fastidious about where he goes. He only ever uses the same corner, which is not something that snakes are supposed to do....
Looks like my boy is going to be seeing a vet again, real soon. Argh, that's going to be fun. Not!
And then there's poor old Doris. She's been steadily losing condition all winter, and tonight I realised that it's put up or shut up time; if she doesn't start eating this week, then I'm going to have to make some hard decisions. Yeah, that hard decision, the one none of us want to make...
But even Zen the Mandarin rat snake is doing well; from his winter of self-imposed torpor he's responded to the increase in daylight hours by starting to eat again. He hasn't lost any body condition, is coming up on his first shed of the year and everything's looking just peachy with him! Now I just need to get him a girlfriend.
So that's the state of play with my serpents! Dull stuff, huh? ;)
So I started with the four small boxes, and my smallest, youngest snake.
Long is a snow corn. I did think (from various physical cues) that the little non-feeding hatchling that was heading for being culled was a male, hence the name... but as time passes I'm beginning to think that he is, in fact, a she! When I took her on, she was very thin and so her tail had the appearance of being longer and thicker (in relation to her body - than it was. As she's put weight on and grown, however, it looks more and more like the narrowed, shorter tail of a little girl.
I have to probe her to be sure, but I think dear Long is female.
Anyway, she's a pretty little thing; she has a delicate head, very well shaped without the 'bulging' eyes that some of the snows can sometimes show. She has pale eyes, and I suspect that she'll develop more pinks as she grows; she could even be what's known as a 'bubblegum' snow. (Pinks, whites and yellows.)
Anyway, temperament is typical corn, laid back and friendly, calm. Although perhaps that's the karma of naming....
Magpie is a black rat snake - another non-feeder that had been heading for being a cull before coming home with me! He's still got his juvenile blotches, but he's beginning to show some of the potential he'll have as an adult; amber eyes, good shaped head, white chin leading down to an unmarked throat, deep body. He's also a typical rat snake, temperament wise - in that as soon as I reach to pick him up he opens his mouth to warn me off, but has never (to date) followed it up with a bite. Once you pick him up he settles down and, although highly strung like almost all of the rat snakes, is easy to handle.
Eats like a pig, too, which is good for a baby. With every shed he changes colour a little more, and I'm really looking forward to watching his adult colours develop. He's a nice little chap, and all the handling is certainly keeping him easy.
Sally is a yellow rat snake, and the intended of my own dear Sam The Bastard... but I suspect that her early history may not allow that. She hasn't grown as well as I'd hoped, and it's always possible that the year and a half she spent hiding under a rock in fear of the adult male rat snakes she shared her viv with has permanently stunted her growth.
She may never grow to be large enough to breed from; if that's the case then she'll have a comfortable life here, with her own viv where she doesn't have to hide from anyone or anything.
Of course, being a yellow she's more than a little neurotic, and although not a biter she will grab on to you with her tail and empty her anal glands, which smells something like burning rubber. Then she relaxes (although always with an eye on doing a bunk), but by then you already smell bad.
She's assuming her adult colours, losing the brownish blotches to get the four stripes typical of an adult yellow rat...and we shall see what the next year brings.
Rosie is the biggest of all the 'smalls', and is my white-sided black rat snake. I'm hoping to breed her with Magpie for either the 2009 or 2010 season; he carries the gene for albino, and it'll be interesting to see how (or even if) it interacts with the gene that produces the white siding effect. Unless I can get hold of a male white sided or leucistic, of course....
It's interesting to compare the temperament of the different rat snakes; all of mine are the same species (Elaphe obsoletus), but two different subspecies (Elaphe obsoletus quadrovittata, the yellow rat snake, and Elaphe obsoletus obsoletus, the black rat snake). Blacks are renowned for being the easiest of all the obsoletus complex, as well as perhaps the largest. If someone wants to start with American rat snakes, the blacks are probably the best place to start; still rather jumpy but rarely biters, on the whole as long as their needs are met they'll stay in their viv and behave themselves.
Unlike the yellows, who are not only neurotic and uptight but are often biters and - from what i can find from other people I've met who keep yellows - consummate escape artists. Certainly Sally and Sam are the only two I've ever had real problems with when it comes to jailbreaks!
I shall have to try and get some decent pictures of Rosie - she's really gorgeous.
Sam The Bastard is - you will all be glad to hear! - in ridiculously fine health. He is, at nine years old, well into middle age, although you would never know it to look at him. After his seven week sojourn loose in my car he's feeding well and in fine, feisty form; he's already bitten me a couple of times when I've had him out to handle, although it's more a nervous strike before he settles and realises that he's not going to be hurt than it is a serious, aggressive attack.
The other interesting thing about the yellow rats is that when you walk into the bedroom, two heads are guaranteed to be poked out and pointed toward you: Sam and Sally. They are always aware of what's going on around them, and tend to position themselves where they can scan the whole room without having to come out in the open.
Sam amuses me; he's one solid bar of muscle, eats well and seems to think that life is something to be attacked and subdued, rather than enjoyed! He is, at the end of the day, one heck of a character - partly why I would like to breed from him. He might be a little shit, but you can't let a personality like that just fade away, can you?
Roo and Rohypnol the royal pythons are growing well, hale and hearty. Roo, the male, will eat anything waved in front of him and cheerfully stuffs down quite large rats; Rohyp, on the other hand, is a little more shy but will scoff down mice until the cows come home. But only white ones; colour bias is surprisingly common amongst snakes, and very common indeed amongst royals. Some will only eat white mice or rats, some only coloured, some only hoodeds; some have a preference for chicks, others will only eat gerbils, or hamsters, or quail!
Tyson, Noodle and Lucy the corn snakes are all bonking madly in response to the longer days, eating and shedding like there's no tomorrow and hopefully we should get some eggs soon-ish. They're all in superb body condition and although Lucy is a little smaller than I would like for breeding, she double clutched last year and is doing very well indeed with me so far.
Oli came out for a while earlier, downstairs to watch TV with us! He's growing like a weed (as Burmese pythons do in their first year), and has just topped three feet long; considering he was barely a foot and a half when I brought him home in November that's quite some growth! He's gorgeous, and although he can be a little hissy at times (he's a chatty little man, our Oli) - especially when he's hungry - he's overall very good natured. Good job too, considering how big he's going to get!
Zico. Ah, my dear, feisty boy! By lunging at Slay to warn him away from his viv - our lad is very territorial of his house - he's banged his nose up a bit, and also seems to have some sort of lump on his forehead. I suspect some kind of abscess; usually you get them when viv hygiene is not all it could be, but that boy is mucked out weekly and he's very fastidious about where he goes. He only ever uses the same corner, which is not something that snakes are supposed to do....
Looks like my boy is going to be seeing a vet again, real soon. Argh, that's going to be fun. Not!
And then there's poor old Doris. She's been steadily losing condition all winter, and tonight I realised that it's put up or shut up time; if she doesn't start eating this week, then I'm going to have to make some hard decisions. Yeah, that hard decision, the one none of us want to make...
But even Zen the Mandarin rat snake is doing well; from his winter of self-imposed torpor he's responded to the increase in daylight hours by starting to eat again. He hasn't lost any body condition, is coming up on his first shed of the year and everything's looking just peachy with him! Now I just need to get him a girlfriend.
So that's the state of play with my serpents! Dull stuff, huh? ;)