Breeding South Western Carpet Pythons

I think breeding any native animal is a very rewarding project. I used to breed native birds and the excitement is just the same if not more so with breeding pythons. Each step is a real buzz. Seeing them copulate, prepare nests, lay eggs and then finally seeing them hatch. I've decided to write up my notes on this years success. Though not very thorough it gives an idea of how to breed this species in captivity.   

T.



This is the male from Greenough (wild caught).

To begin with I prepared the pythons for breeding by replicating a winter in their captive environments.
This was achieved by shortening the amount of basking time they had each day. I stopped feeding around May and started reducing the amount of hours that heat was given once I knew they had well and truly passed all their food. Over summer I give 12/12 hours of heat and no heat. This was reduced gradually down to 8 hours of heat a day by mid winter (34 degrees) and I gradually returned the amount of heat to 12 hours of heat end of August start of September. I noticed in mid winter that temps got as low as 15 degrees in their enclosures. (However I regret not keeping exact notes on my temps).


The Female from Greenough (wild caught).

My aim was to breed a pair of Imbricata I had acquired from a friend at WAHS (Western Australia Herpetology Society). They were wild caught from the Greenough area and had been bred by the previous owner a few years before. They are estimated to be about 7 years old.
I also had a female of mixed locality that had origins of Wanneroo and an unknown local. A beautiful looking snake I had obtained as a yearling, I had considered it perhaps too small to breed at 1.9kg, but put the male in with her once or twice anyway.


The Wanneroo x Unknown locale (captive bred specimen)

Starting on the 1st of October I put the male (Greenough) in with the female (Greenough) for a week on and week off. By the third week I had noticed no real interest between the two pythons so separated them again until November. At this time I felt nothing was going to happen so I put the male in with the Wanneroo female and observed copulation on the 4-11-11. I left the male in there for a further two day's then moved him to the other females enclosure where I observed copulation on the 7-11-11. I left the male in there for another two weeks then separated him back into his own enclosure for good.



Carpet pythons mating.

 

Nest box with the lid off. Notice the thin layer of sphagnum moss.

Nest Boxes

For nest boxes I simply used a black click clack style storage tub. A 50mm round hole was cut in the top for access and I lined the bottom with newspaper and sphagnum moss. I kept the moss and newspaper moist but not dripping wet. To start with I had too much sphagnum moss and found that the pythons digging around in it actually got it stuck in their gums. I had to open their mouths and clean it out with a cotton bud. Reducing the amount of moss seemed to stop this from happening again.

The Eggs.

The Wanneroo females eggs in the incubation container.

The Wanneroo female laid 7 eggs and 4 slugs (slugs being infertile and not fully formed eggs). Of the 7 eggs 6 showed to be fertile when candled. I was in Melbourne when they were laid, but luckily the bloke I had house sitting was keeping an eye on them for me. And called me as soon as she started laying eggs. In turn I was able to call another friend who had experience breeding her Stimson pythons the year before, who came and put the eggs in a container with a 1:1 mix of vermiculite and water and into the incubator.



Greenough female laying eggs.

The Greenough female laid 15 eggs. The same number of eggs as she did in her first clutch a few years before. I was lucky enough to be home for this clutch and even more lucky that I got up at 3am to shut the windows during a storm and decided to check on my snakes. She was in the middle of laying and had already laid 5 of the 15 eggs when I checked on her. I was able to separate the first 5 and took the next 10 as she laid them.





The Incubator.

The incubator I used is a wine fridge conversion. It was a small fridge I got from Big W for $98. A sparky by trade, I was able to wire it up so the thermometer display on the door still worked and the internal fan still powered to keep the warm air even. I also used a probe pulse proportional thermostat. And kept a close eye on temps with a probe thermometer and an infra red thermometer, as the door thermometer did not have decimal point degrees. The temp varied less than .2 degrees except when I opened the door etc.
There wasn’t enough room in the wine fridge incubator for the second set of eggs, so I also set up a foam box incubator. I put 8 in the fridge incubator and 7 in the foam box incubator. The pictures are pretty self explanatory. The lid has a heat cord attached to it with coreflute. I’m using a pulse proportional thermostat and a probe thermometer. I tested both the foam box and the wine fridge incubators for a week before I even had eggs. Also a test with damp vermiculite to see how bad the condensation got. It's important not to have water drip on your eggs as it will kill them!

Though not as much fun to watch or to make as the fridge conversion I think this is the best incubator of the two. The over head heating stops any condensation being created and the temps are just as stable. It is also free if you ask the fruit and veg supplier nicely.

The condensation in the fridge did make the eggs swell a lot more, so possibly bigger babies. But at the risk of having the eggs not collapse and the babies not being able to get out of the moist egg. (It is important in the last few weeks of incubation that the eggs dry out and collapse. This makes it possible for the pythons to cut their way out with their egg tooth) I found the smaller containers also didn't allow the eggs to collapse as well as the larger container. When I noticed the foam box eggs collapsing I left the lid off more often to dry out the mix a little more in the fridge batch. 



Hatchlings

It usually takes around 50 days for the eggs to hatch. Once one head has poked through I put a small cut in the remaining eggs and removed a bit of fluid. Sometimes fully developed pythons can drown in the egg. This can be for a number of reasons but I personally think the main one is that the egg hasn't dried out enough for them to get out. By me pipping the eggs and removing some fluid this ensures they will not drown.


The tools I use to pip the eggs.

Once they emerge they will spend hours sometimes days with just their heads poking out. Often if disturbed they may even disappear back into the egg. The time spent still in the egg is often the result of the hatchling absorbing the rest of the egg sack. Once they emerge you can still see remnants of it in their mid body and it disappears in a day or two. Once they are fully emerged I take them out of the egg container and put them into an individual click clack tub.
Above you can see where I have cut a few eggs. After pipping the eggs, some took another week to come out. Air into the egg at this stage in development seems to have no negative effect, since I had 100% success with all my fertile eggs.




Housing Hatchlings.

Click clack with plastic lattice taken out (seen on left)
Hatchling sitting on top of its hide.

The individual click clacks that the hatchlings are placed into are very basic. They have paper towel lining as substrate, a hide, a water dish (in the form of a glass candle holder) and some plastic lattice for climbing. All the hatchling tubs are placed on a shelf that has a heat cord running across the back. The tubs are placed over the cord and a warm spot of 32 degrees C is maintained at one end of the tub.







Hatchling taking it's first feed on lattice.

About 10 days after hatching the pythons will have their first shed. Some will eat after this first shed others will not eat for a month or two. They have plenty of nutrients from the egg and do not need to eat straight away. Getting them feeding has proven to be the most challenging part so far.

Some stats:

The Wanneroo females stat's are:
Copulating observed: 4-11-11
Cloudy Eyes: 18-11-11
Slough: 27-11-11
Eggs deposited: 20-12-11
Number of eggs: 7 eggs 4 slugs
Number of fertile eggs: 6
Incubated at: 31.5 degrees
Hatched: 2 x on the 13-02-12 and 4 x on the 14-02-12
Number of days incubated: 49 and 50
Hatchling weights: 21-24 grams


The Greenough female's stat's are:
Copulating observed: 7-11-11
Cloudy Eyes: 3-12-11
Slough: 10-12-11
Eggs deposited: 4-1-12
Number of eggs: 15
Number of fertile eggs: 15
Incubated at: 31.5 degrees
Date hatched foam box inc: 28-02-12
Number Hatched in foam box incubator: 7/7.
Number of days incubated in foam box: 50 ( 4-1-12 to the 28-02-12)
Date hatched in fridge inc:2nd to 3rd March 2012
Number Hatched in fridge incubator: 8/8
Number of days incubated in fridge incubator: 54-54 days