June update----I see your true colors

The Thawmaster!!

I only feed frozen/thawed rats & mice. You can argue about that if you like but it's the most efficient way for me to pursue this hobby so I don't want to hear it. For me thawing is essential. For years I've just used a pan of water which had to be filled & refilled with warm water from the sink that wasn't too hot (don't want to cook the mice) but wasn't too cold so that the rats and mice could be close to a natural body temp when fed to the snakes. Tiny pinkies and large rats thaw at different rates and on feeding night I have to repeatedly stop the other things I'm dong to check up on my thawing rodents. BUT NOT ANY MORE! Because I have built the Thawmaster! (I'd trade mark it but it's just a heated water bath built with stuff from Amazon)

I rounded up a 150W heating element, a PID temp controller, a submersible thermocouple, a power cord, and some miscellaneous fittings. Then I just drew it up in CAD, plasma cut the stainless steel sheet metal parts, broke them and TIG welded the whole thing together! Voila! anyone can do it (if they can TIG weld and have a plasma table & press brake)

I know I'm being an ass but an industrious person could use a metal wash tub, pop rivets & JB weld to build basically the same thing.

I didn't document building the tank but here's the leak test. All good.

Then I wired everything up, figured out the programming and tested out the heater. (note: the K-type thermocouple that came with this PID controlled was NOT stainless and quickly rusted, so I replaced it with one that can handle the job.)

I mounted up the controls and ran it to see how it would hold temp. There's regularly a few degrees of variation on this completely un-insulated water bath but it's amazingly accurate for the <$100 total price tag. I was also worried that I might need a pump to circulate the water but it does amazingly well without one.

Here are some pics from right now as I type this. This is my finished prototype and it has runs 6 nights a week for the last month with only one problem which was caused by the thermocouple I replaced.

final note: I put my rodents in ziploc bags and the little mice & rats do just fine but the big rats have sharp nails that always poke holes in the bags so you always get some leakage. Dead rat water that is regularly heated to 100 degrees is a text book example of somewhere to grow horrible bacteria. I change the 6 gallons of water twice per week after thawing large rats and I wash the whole thing out with soapy water at least once per week! I need to find something better than ziplocs. Maybe something washable and reusable.

...but that is a problem for another day.

Snake omelettes?

After my terrible showing with last year's eggs I decided to make 2 changes.

1) I fed more frequently

2) I didn't cool my snakes for as long

The hope was that more food would yield more eggs in females and the short cooling would preserve more sperm in the males.

It's hard to argue with success!

April 21: Female 2012-01-04 / Male 2010-01-02 (10) eggs (0) slugs

April 23: Female 2014-01-02 / Male 2014-01-08 (6) eggs (4) slugs

April 23: Female 2013-01-03 / Male 2014-01-01 (9) eggs (2) slugs

April 24: Female 2013-05-02 / Male 2014-01-04 (13) good eggs

April 27: Female 2006-01-01 / Male 2013-01-02 (19) eggs (0) slugs

April 28: Female 2014-01-03 / Male 2014-01-08 (3) eggs (6) slugs (this as her first time laying)

The youngest snakes (particularly the 2014 males did the worst. Snakes who were at least 4 years old did very well. A lot of factors lend themselves to this, for example how much you feed and how large the snakes are. There's a large body size difference between the 2014 snakes and the 2013 snakes and this translates to success in breeding. (I was once warned by an actual herpetologist that breeding females who they are too small can shorten their lives and stunt their growth so I have always waited until they looked like adult snakes but the breeders I know insist that 2-3 years is all you need and then get to making eggs!)

I still have 3 more females that have not laid yet and I face the problem in 90 days of what to do with all the babies that hatch but that will be this year's challenge and I am starting to plan for that now.

A few folks have contacted me about buying snakes and I certainly need to sell some but I needed to document what I've done and be able to tell people what they are getting. If you look through the pics most of my adults aren't much different than typical Texas ratsnakes from South East and Central Texas so I really wanted to document how these babies change over the first couple years of their lives. I am seeing a spectrum of ground color running from silvery/grey to lemon yellow to pumpkin orange and the dark dorsal patterns vary from typical to almost completely washed out. But which will be which when it's a bucket full of grey babies?

If I've learned anything about life, it's that when you think you know what's going on, start to document & chart it and you'll quickly see that you only knew part of what was going on.

More pics soon!

Easter Eggs!

Well, it's actually the week after Easter but the eggs come when they come. This is the first batch. (2012-01-04 female and 2010-01-02 male)

(10) healthy eggs! Things are already better than last year! 

Colors & Patterns Update March (OK, April...)

Spring breeding

It's time, once again, to make matches and hatch babies. In an effort to do better than last year I have started to compile data.

First I needed to see who I have in my breeding pool and what their collective breeding history is. To do this I got a little compulsive. I posted pics of all current snakes and their lineage suing various color wires to track the original breeding pairs. I wish I could have used 2 colors per individual and tracked which half of each set of genetics went where but I have no way of knowing so it's one color per unrelated set of genes (hard to see in the pic). It's not ideal, but it's as accurate as I could get with simple observation.

This was an eye opening graphic of how inbred these animals are. To test the simple recessive traits I need a larger unrelated breeding pool and the ability to raise many more animals. To be honest, I'm not willing to commit to that.

However, this did show me who had not bred, or who had not yet been paired for breeding so this year I concentrated on the "unknown known".

I warmed early, fed more and waited for all the females to cycle through a pre-ovulation shed. So, I'm hoping for good results. The only "iffy" pairing involve the youngest snakes.

In related news, I am working on the quarterly update for the 2016 color change comparison but several of the babies where still in shed. I hope to get that done next week end. Until then put this image of my 2010 male next to any Texas rat snake you've ever seen.

Colors & Patterns Update (December)

colors & patterns

I never realized how hard it was to get accurate indoor pictures using artificial lighting. I have a new appreciation of good photography. Anyway, I did the best I could to ID older snakes in previous pics and start an accurate record of this year's babies.

One more thing before I begin. I've handled hundreds (possibly over a thousand) Texas rat snakes now and I can say without hesitation that they are typically very high strung but some of these animals are calm and pleasant from birth (much more like corn snakes). As I document the change in patterns & colors I will also be adding notes about who is calmer and easier to handle.

Enjoy the snake pics!

The Saga Continues!

I have put together a new set of slides updating my Texas Rat Snake breeding project.

The following slides document who I bred and what babies they produced.

I have also put together a comprehensive document to record the changes in color and pattern of baby snakes over their first year of life. Most of these baby snakes fall into the "typical" range with some being noticeably different in color and pattern and a small percentage whose pattern fades over a couple years to produce a "ghost" effect. I'll be posting those slides as soon as I redo some pictures. (I didn't realize how difficult it was to get good pic of snakes until it mattered)

Catching up on snake stuff: August 16, 2016

Well, I haven't been very diligent with my posts here but I have had some nice run in's with reptiles this year. I only just realized that I haven't posted since the rattlesnake back in June. So let's make up for lost time.

I've come across a few Texas rat snakes (P. o lindheimeri) since the spring.

This first snake was cruising around a pond on a nice sunny day back in March. As soon as he saw me he went into the standard wavy defensive position you see below. They normally do this if they don't think you've seen them yet.

In the shadows of a forest or grassy field this wavy pattern probably helps to break up the long sleek outline of the snake. You can see this pretty well against the light colored ground in the picture. I added a wavy red line to the picture below. Notice how the waves make an alternating light/dark pattern in the sunlight? The whole trick to camouflage is to break up your shape. Evolution encourages this.

This snake also provided good examples of several other typical rat snake defensive behaviors. Texas rat snakes are very high strung and do not like to be handled. When touched or picked up they will hiss, strike and bite. I have a lot of experience with these animals and although I am holding this snake in my bare hand you'll notice it displaying multiple defensive postures.

#1 the head is spread out to look as imposing and possibly venomous as possible. (see red triangle below)

#2 The neck is pulled back into an S-shaped. (See red lines below) He can and will strike from this position. When striking he will exhale sharply. Often the strike is a fake (meaning that he doesn't intend to bite you). Often the snake will be so aggressive with this faking, it will bump it's nose against you. The contact is meant to make you jump back away from the snake giving it time to retreat. However, if it chooses to bite you, it has very sharp, thin fish hook like teeth and it can draw blood easily.

#3 You can see in the lower left of the picture below that the cloacal opening is displayed. That's because this snake is about to dump a horrible smelling musk on me along with whatever feces/urea it can muster.  None of these things are dangerous to a grown human who washes their hands but they are unpleasant. So, let's be aware and avoid that, shall we?

A month later I caught this skinny Texas rat snake in a pine forest far from any water. In the picture below it is trying to do the wavy thing but this snake is severely malnourished and probably, really distracted by its search to find food. Life in the wild is tough.

I only handled it for a minute but you will notice that this weak snake is much less defensive.

This Texas rat snake, like the first one, is very dark with very little red or yellow visible on the back.

Don't worry, the skinny snake took off like it was healthy enough. It probably found some bird's eggs or baby squirrels and is nice and fat by now...or it was eaten by almost anything else in the forest. We'll probably never know.

In mid-June I took a few trips to the Mineola Nature Preserve and found loads of fun snakes.

This little ribbon snake (T. sauritus) was catching some sun when I spotted it.

These are quick little snakes that like to hang out near the water. They hunt pretty much anything they can catch but this snake was almost certainly after the soft molted crayfish and tadpoles in the water nearby. These snakes don't strike much and are fairly placid once captured, but be warned, they are fast, so be faster.

I like the beautifully subtle blues and greens. 

This was a very mature, well fed snake.I let it go right where I found it and it ran off into the flooded grass nearby.

I caught quite a few water snakes on these trips. Most people assume all snakes in the water are cottonmouths. In fact, almost all the water snakes in East Texas as harmless, frog eating members of the Genus "Nerodia". Below is a broad banded water snake (N fasciata). These snakes display a wide variety of great earthy reds, yellows and browns ranging from caramel to coffee. Cool snakes.

The belly coloration is often much more impressive since it's the only glossy part of the snake. The dorsal scales are sharply keeled and always look "dusky"

This mottled overlapping coloration makes for a super effective camouflage. You might be able to argue that the scale keeling helps to break up the sunlight but I doubt that's th eonly purpose for this feature.

This snake was calm as it made its get away.

Closely related to the broad banded water snake is the snake below. The Yellow Bellied water snake (N. erythrogaster).

You can't find a more generic, plain Jane snake that this. It's brown. It's a couple feet long. It's a snake. No cool colors, it can't eat a whole pig, it's not on a plane with Sam Jackson. This is probably the snake Lutherans think of when they ready the bible.

It does have a cool yellow belly.

And it is aggressive. This one turned right around a bit me "for reals".

Finally, here's a happy, little baby coachwhip I caught in some leaves last week. This particular snake will look much different when it's grown.

I kind of like the speckled pattern. It looks like weaving, doesn't it?

The huge eyes and sharply contrasted scales make it look amazingly like an anime character. (there is no filter on the picture below)

Here's the little fella in his natural environment. Despite understanding how natural selection drives evolution I still think it's amazing how the hues of his skin so closely match the fallen leaves. I'll keep any eye on this area and maybe in a year or two I'll get a picture of this snake as an adult.

It's worthy noting that coachwhips (and black racers) have a super high metabolic rate that seems to help them act like mammals. Notably once they are picked up they settle down and lay in your hands. Once this guy settled down I put him back in the leaves and tried to film him running off. He just sat their until I actually touched him again. I don't fully understand this behavior but you can judge for yourself.

See, that should have been at least 4 posts.

I'll finish up with a cool video I got the other day of a hog nose snake. I have filmed them several time doing their defensive displays but they always go to the "play dead" phase. I was able to keep this one just interested enough in getting away that you can see him relax, drop the hood and make his run for it. If you've ever played with hognose snakes in the wild you might find this interesting.