One of my pet snakes has, for the last week or so, been hiding under the paper on the bottom of her enclosure. Nothing too strange as she does that normally. Only this time I noticed the paper moving, when I checked I noticed that she was coiled in a very tight wrap and was shivering. The kind of wrap that a female would make around eggs and the shivering is a way for the female to produce heat to incubate.
"That can't be" says I. "she's in an enclosure with another female"
Sure enough a quick check under her confirmed the presence of a clutch of eggs! The "female" that I bought a few years ago in Katherine turned out to be a fella!
I'm going to move the eggs to a mates incubator on sunday and hope thay all hatch.


Anyone want to buy a snake puppy?

I don't need mongoose and meerkat feed or I would take you up on that.

What kind of snake is it?

King Brown?

No mate nothing that nastie. Its a Darwin Carpet Python.

Wow that's pretty cool.

I know a friend of mine in Washington State converted his barn to be a snake factory.

He makes more money breeding snakes than he does as a pilot in the Navy.

Especially when he sells a big full grown python to a zoo, or a poisonous snake.

I know he got $3500 for a big 200 pound python and about $10,000 for a king cobra that was a sub adult.

Beautiful snake Bakes. Good luck hatching the eggs.

Thanks Sevens, I'm taking them out today to put into an incubator.


D99 the big money snakes here are the albino's. While quite common inthe US, at the moment in Australia they are still worth some big $$. Albino snakes have been found natrally in the Darwin Carpet pythons like mine above and the Olive pythons. A breeding pair of albino Olives was put up for sale for $100,000 a few years ago. I'm hoping to put an albino Darwin carpet male over my female next year. They can go for $1000ish with the albino gene to $5000 for a full albino.

In states that you can have poisonous snakes in America I know that they are big business. Especially if your into milking them for venom. A job that to me is too dangerous to be worth the dollars.

But oversized pythons are always worth big money. Heck oversized anything is.

The guy I got my "female" from has a venemous licence. He doesn't milk them however. He keeps inland tiapans and death adders and was tagged by one of his own death adders. There was no anti venom for that species at the local hospital so he had to ride it out. He now buys his own and stores it at the hospital.

We can't leagaly keep exotic reptiles which is quite a good law considering the problem you guys have in Florida with feral pythons.

Very true!

I actually met the famous snake man of Jacksonville, FL. He's a retired Navy guy and now runs a snake bite emergency information agency. Mostly he travels the US training hospital staff on what to do.

I think you have a couple of men in Australia that do the same thing. The three of them talk.

This guy was in his late 80s and spry as a 50 year old. Said he had been bitten over 240 times by rattlesnakes alone. Not to mention cobras, puff adders, and mambas.

I think I'll pass on snake keeping for fun and profit.

Nothing against people that like snakes or people that understand snakes. To me, the only good snakes are dead snakes.

I'm with RonE sorry bakes

Thats ok guys. The wife hates them as well!

Looks like you are putting that newspaper article on parenting to good use!

quote:

We can't leagaly keep exotic reptiles which is quite a good law considering the problem you guys have in Florida with feral pythons.

There's a heck of a lot more than a breeding population of reticulated pythons in Florida. There was a show on it the other day. Apparently they have some large monitor lizards, various birds, and I've even heard there are some monkeys somewhere near one of the airports.

It's too bad we couldn't release some species like gaur, Indian rhino, jaguar, and tigers. Not sure locals would enjoy the tigers and jaguars too much, but would certainly be nice if we could establish a hunt-able population where we could effectively manage and protect them from poachers. Wishful thinking I guess.


Bakes, do you ever see any piebald variations of your snakes? The piebalds were always my favorite.

Not yet mate. You can bet someones working on it though. I have seen a scaless death adder.
I do like the piebald snakes as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
We can't leagaly keep exotic reptiles which is quite a good law considering the problem you guys have in Florida with feral pythons.

Yup here in Florida the pythons are a real problem in the Glades, but even worse is when I heard of the AC repair guy that was bitten by a Black Momba in Miami area. He was very luck to live through it. The snake was never found or seen again and they have no idea where it came from. It's still out there. After each bad hurricane here it seems more wild pets get loose.
Don't get me wrong, I love to mess with snakes. As a kid in Malaysia I used to have Cobras, Crates, Pythons, and what ever else I could catch. Mom fricken hated it. : )

quote:

After each bad hurricane here it seems more wild pets get loose.

Swordfish has an interesting point. I wonder how many times a disaster hits and several snakes and lizards get loose because they were forgotten and left behind.

Seeing gwardars on the farm here on a daily basis at the moment which is quite unusual . Gwardar is a local brown snake species that ranks in the top ten venomous snakes from memory. Not a big fan personally and don't make a point of dodging them if in a vehicle.
Pythons I can tolerate.