House snake eggs!!!

[Matts inverts]

Hey y’all. My striped house snake just had 4 eggs. Using tips, I learned they are fertile. I believed the shop when they said she was CB. Can they have asexual birth like pythons. Wasn’t planning on breeding her yet but I guess I skipped a couple steps. What do I do with the eggs till I can get an incubator set up? Is deli at 80 room temp fine if set up properly as a non heated incubator? How do I wash the female if she’s trying to bite?

 

[Matts inverts]

Do I need perilite or vermiculite

 

[Scorpiobsession]

Incubate them at about 85*. How old is she, younger snakes don't usually reproduce asexually. She was likely introduced to a male at some point. Is there a warmer part of your house where you could put them? You might be able to put the egg incubation container in part of the enclosure if it's consistent. It's typically recommended to use vermiculite for incubating. Do you have a picture of her?

 

[Matts inverts]

I don’t have any good pictures. She’s 31 inches though

 

[Matts inverts]

This is her

 

[Malum Argenteum]

I don't keep house snakes, but I've read that Togo striped are typically imports. A quick web search suggests few are bred here.

Some 'shops' simply don't know. They often get animals from unvetted sources, so as mentioned there's a good chance it spent time with another snake, possibly not the same species.

 

[Matts inverts]

When I bought it, it was in a 35 with three other snakes. My main option was a $150 black house snake with a deformed head but still perfect in every way. Had no issues but the day I was going to buy it, it got respirator complications and couldn’t buy it. Had to pick up roaches and saw her so. I thought it was perfect. Was labeled as brown/ black house snake but it looks just like a Boaedon lineatus so that’s what I identified it as. Told it was captive bred but the dude also thought they got 8 feet and males got bigger than females but because I’m straight up addicted, I knew better. She started getting chunkier but I upped the food size so I thought she was just gaining a lot of weight. A day or two ago, I bought a mouse but she didn’t eat so I thought I accidentally bought a rat. I went to try and feed today and found 4 perfect eggs. A bit small and not enough though. I’m going to call the shop and see what they imported and what species it is. Couple more supplies for the incubator.

 

[Matts inverts]

Just called ant the shop said they had no idea of what species, if it was CB, or if it was a hybrid. If there’s any way you guys can tell what species it is, please tell because I’m really confused rn.

 

[Malum Argenteum]

There are brown house snakes that look like that. Such as the Togo locale, but there are other non-locale fuliginosus with stripes. It would be unlikely that a lineatus would be mislabeled as a brown, I would think. It could well be a hybrid, given the source you've described. Visually IDing reptiles that could be hybrids is impossible. Even scale counting can be misleading.

I hope that when you sell the offspring you don't try to ID them as anything beyond 'house snake'. There is so much misidentification in the snake hobby that it is depressing. Hopefully if you try to breed in the future you'll start with a quality pair from a dedicated breeder. Yours will make a nice pet, though.

Sorry to be a downer. Trying to keep the hobby clean -- hope it's appreciated. People sometimes take it wrong, and I'm sorry when that happens.

 

[Matts inverts]

There are brown house snakes that look like that. Such as the Togo locale, but there are other non-locale fuliginosus with stripes. It would be unlikely that a lineatus would be mislabeled as a brown, I would think. It could well be a hybrid, given the source you've described. Visually IDing reptiles that could be hybrids is impossible. Even scale counting can be misleading.

I hope that when you sell the offspring you don't try to ID them as anything beyond 'house snake'. There is so much misidentification in the snake hobby that it is depressing. Hopefully if you try to breed in the future you'll start with a quality pair from a dedicated breeder. Yours will make a nice pet, though.

Sorry to be a downer. Trying to keep the hobby clean -- hope it's appreciated. People sometimes take it wrong, and I'm sorry when that happens.

Thanks. This is the only animal I don’t know the species or local of. I have low expression mourning geckos that I was planning to breed first. I was planning on pairing her but I was going to get a proper id with local, exact color traits, and species but now I’m a little sad knowing what the shop knows.

 

[Matts inverts]

Got done with an incubator at around 10. Cost a ton for the thermostat but the rest was really cheap. Picked up a styrofoam cooler, heat pad, and perilite and used old materials. Worth it to make sure the eggs make it. I wish I could’ve been prepared. I’m all about setting up before purchasing or doing something but today was a big surprise.

 

[Malum Argenteum]

Thanks. This is the only animal I don’t know the species or local of. I have low expression mourning geckos that I was planning to breed first. I was planning on pairing her but I was going to get a proper id with local, exact color traits, and species but now I’m a little sad knowing what the shop knows.

Yeah, it is sad.

I've been seriously breeding reptiles for about 12 years (sell online, vend at shows) and dabbling long before that, and learned a few things along the way. A big one is to spend the money -- and even more so the time and effort -- on finding quality breeding stock from quality breeders and raising them up yourself.

Pet store animals (generally; there are exceptional local reptile stores, but they don't house snakes together and always know the species and genetics) are of unconfirmed breeding (possible hybrids/intergrades/genetic messes, and none of this can be figured out visually with any reliability) and not always CB.

Animals housed together without quarantine (this shop didn't QT, and didn't test for crypto or paramyxo or anything else, I'm certain) are many times more likely to be carrying pathogens/mites, and carrying them to your other animals (do you QT in a different room? Test incoming animals? Wash hands between handling animals? All important).

Pet store adult animals have a fair chance of being breeding animals that didn't work out -- bad hatch rates, kinky offspring, hatchlings that don't feed, whatever -- and were sold into the pet trade. I sell my bad breeders into the pet trade, as they make fine pets. Buying hatchlings and raising them up gives you insight into each animal's feeding routine and temperament development and such so you can pass that info along to buyers of their offspring so they know what to expect.

Most people who are willing to pay fair money for offspring are going to be looking for info on the origins of the breeding stock, IME. If the answer to "who bred the parents" is "I don't know" or "I got it from a pet store" serious buyers are going to walk away. FWIW, if I were going to be breeding house snakes, I'd try to buy hatchlings from Warren Klein at Bushveld. As I understand, he used to live in SA and brought his breeders with him to the US, so they're all top-notch.

Getting quality animals from the breeder can involve getting on a wait list, so a person has time to plan enclosures and such. House snakes mature quickly enough that this isn't a big deal, though. Some of my snakes took five or six years to get to breeding age.

Fun projects, though. Good luck.

 

[Matts inverts]

Thank you very much. I have one more question. Would I label them as captive bred, born, or something else. There is a 50 percent chance it happened during captivity but because I’m not sure of when she mated. What do I label the babies as. I’ll keep an updated tab to see how the eggs are doing and the babies hatching. Can barely weight. Thank you guys so much.

 

[Malum Argenteum]

If it were me, I'd label the hatchlings as "house snakes", as that's the only thing that can be known with any degree of certainty. If anyone asked for details on species or CB status, I'd simply tell them the whole story (got an unidentified gravid house snake from a shop).

 

[Scorpiobsession]

I wouldn't sell them except as pets and make sure that the buyer is fully aware that they could be hybrids.