How to care for a snake at home. Already ordinary (non-poisonous snake) How to properly contain a snake at home

Common already distributed almost throughout Europe, in North-West Africa, Western Asia to the North-West of Mongolia, south Eastern Siberia and regions of Northern China in the east and Southwestern Iran in the south. It lives in various wet biotopes - along the banks of rivers, in meadows, in reed beds, in forests. The coloration is of the same type - the general color is from gray to black, characteristic feature is yellow or white spots behind the head, however, in some individuals they may be absent. Ordinary is already very popular with beginner terrariumists, and its maintenance is not difficult. He needs a terrarium of a horizontal type, spacious enough, since the snake is already quite mobile, with a large reservoir and several shelters. It is advisable to use hygroscopic soil - sphagnum moss, peat, a mixture of gravel and earth. Lighting must be powerful enough. daytime temperature 24-26 C, night about 18C. Frogs serve as the main food, and it is often possible to accustom the snake to take not only live, but also pre-killed frogs, which is especially important in winter time. Sometimes you can offer fish. To stimulate reproduction, snakes can be placed in artificial wintering - 2-3 months at 8-10C, which, however, is not necessary. For a year, you can get 2 or more masonry. Mating usually occurs in the spring, in April-May, after a few weeks, eggs are laid, up to 50 pcs. Incubation at 29C - 23-30 days. Young growth independently begins to eat small frogs and live fish. It is interesting that snake clutches are extremely viable, withstand temperature drops for a short time from 10C to 55C.

Description and distribution

This harmless snake, well known to many Russians, reaches 120 (occasionally 150) cm in length. It has a dark, often black, coloration of the back and white spots on the belly. To understand that this snake is just an ordinary snake, and it should not be feared, you need to take a good look at the head. characteristic feature in its color is the presence of yellow or white temporal spots.

The range is very wide. It can be found almost throughout Europe, in Northwest Africa, in Western Asia, in the south of Eastern Siberia and the adjacent regions of Northern China.

Features of biology

It lives in places one way or another connected with water - along the banks of rivers, lakes, ponds, in floodplain meadows, in reed beds, swamps, near mountain streams and near springs. He swims and dives beautifully, and indulges in this activity with pleasure. Perhaps you have met snakes in nature more than once. And not only in the forest, but also in the immediate vicinity of your home - in the garden, in the basement, in a barn or in a haystack.

During the winter, these snakes hibernate. To do this, they crawl into rodent burrows, under tree roots and other shelters. The snakes come out of wintering from March to May, depending on the latitude conditions.

In the wild, snakes feed on frogs, toads, fish, lizards, as well as small rodents, birds and insects. In July-August, the female lays from 6 to 35 eggs in heaps of rotten leaves or manure, in rodent burrows, in soil cracks and other shelters with high humidity. Egg incubation lasts approximately 60 days. Babies appear in late July - early September.

To distinguish a male from a female, you need to pay attention to the tail. In males, it is long and with a characteristic thickening at the base, while in females it is short, without thickening.

Content Features

To keep these reptiles, you need a terrarium with a size of at least 100 50 60 cm. To make the snake feel good, install a heater in one corner of the terrarium - an incandescent lamp, and make an air vent covered with a strong mesh in the other. The temperature in a warm corner during the day should be up to 30 ° C. It would be nice to put some kind of stone under the lamp so that the snake can warm itself. The heating must be turned off at night.

To make the snake feel comfortable, put some free-form shelter in the terrarium: a snag, a shelf, a piece of bark. In the dwelling, be sure to install a cuvette with water, where you could easily swim and lock up during the molting period. And also put a cuvette with peat or sphagnum or use them as soil. After all, snakes always choose damp places for their place of residence, and peat and sphagnum retain moisture well. In order to better retain moisture, periodically spray the soil with a spray bottle.

Feeding

They feed snakes in captivity mainly with live frogs and fish. It must be remembered that it is especially difficult to provide snakes with live food in winter if snakes are not hibernated. We can only recommend making a solid supply of frogs in the refrigerator. You can feed the snake about once every three days, after the snake has digested the previous food. For a change, you can offer him mice, but, in general, they are reluctant to take such food.

In order to be able to drink fresh water, you should regularly change it in the artificial reservoir of the terrarium. Along with feed, it is necessary to give various mineral supplements: crushed eggshell, calcium gluconate or glycerophosphate. You can add to the drinker mineral water("Borjomi"). No more than once a month, you can offer powdered vitamins with food. Once a month, it is necessary to conduct a course of irradiation of the snake with ultraviolet light, household appliances such as UFO, from 1 to 5 minutes during the week from a distance of 50 cm. The substrate and the skin of the animal must be dry. In summer, you can take out snakes in the sun.

Wintering

With constant feeding, especially for young snakes, wintering is not required. If the snakes refuse to take food in the winter season, or if you want to prepare it for breeding, it is necessary to arrange wintering under strict observance of the following conditions. The snake should be placed in a light-tight, ventilated cage filled with sphagnum. The temperature during wintering should be approximately 5-9°C. . Within two weeks, the temperature should be gradually lowered, be sure to first make sure that the snake has completely digested food with last feeding. When removing a snake from wintering, on the contrary, it is necessary to gradually increase the temperature. To maintain moisture, the soil in the cage must be periodically sprayed. The duration of wintering in the normal state of the animal is about 2 months.

After the withdrawal from wintering, the snake is irradiated with ultraviolet light and fed, adding preparations containing vitamin "E" to the feed. Then males and females are planted next to each other.

reproduction

Approximately 50-60 days after mating, the females lay eggs, for which it is necessary to prepare a cuvette with sphagnum, where they will lay the clutch. The masonry is removed and together with the cage is placed in an incubator at a temperature of 27-29°C. . After 50-60 days, the snakes hatch from the eggs, which begin to feed after the first molt.

We emphasize that under the conditions home terrarium all this is easier to describe than to do, since the risk of losing the snake, laying it down for the winter, is too great. In general, it is much easier to keep tropical snakes that do not hibernate in their homeland than any temperate reptiles.

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Water already

The water one is already painted in olive or brownish tones with dark spots in a checkerboard pattern. Occasionally there are completely black individuals. The belly is yellow or red, with black spots.

This one is more heat-loving and moisture-loving. It lives in Russia and Ukraine in the lower reaches of the rivers flowing into the Caspian and Black Seas.

The main food in nature - small fish, also eats tadpoles and frogs. The content of the water snake in captivity is almost the same as the content common grass snake. However, it requires that the aquaterrarium has twice as much water as land.

You will need

• - spacious terrarium;
• - a cuvette for water;
• - soil;
• - snags for landscape design;
• - moss;
• - incandescent lamp;
• - live food.

Instruction

For the snake, it is necessary to prepare a terrarium that is spacious and high enough - after all, an adult, depending on, can reach a length of 1 - 1.5 m. Make sure that the terrarium is tightly closed with a mesh lid. The bottom can be covered with sand or peat. Required condition for the snake - the presence of a reservoir in the terrarium. The size of the reservoir should be such that it can curl up there entirely. Place one two-snag into the terrarium that your pet can climb in the same way as he would. Try to arrange them so that you can already use them as a shelter. Moss-covered areas will also be a nice addition to the landscape - it will help keep moisture comfortable for the snake.

Install an incandescent lamp above the terrarium, preferably with a mirror reflector. This will allow the snake to get enough light and heat even on rainy days. Remember also that the terrarium is best placed in the sunniest part of the room. Because to create already safe conditions for not so easy, it is better not to let him sink into this state. Hibernation can be avoided by providing the snake with enough heat, light and live food for a year.

One of the features of keeping snakes is that they need living, moving food. It can be frogs, tadpoles, small fish for the snake. As a last resort, if it is not possible to get live food in winter, the snake can be accustomed to frozen food. But then the food will have to be put into the snake's mouth by force, since it will not perceive motionless pieces of meat or fish as food. This method of feeding can cause injury to the snake, due to the fragility of its jaws. You need to feed the snake about once every three days.

If it loses mobility, and its skin - color and shine, perhaps it will have to molt. It is important not to confuse this condition with a disease. Another sign that a snake is about to shed is its desire to stay in the water for as long and as often as possible. Perhaps you will be able to see how it gets out of the old skin. After molting, your pet will appear in fresh scales, bright and shiny. Old skins can be saved, observing the growth dynamics of the grass snake on them.

Canaries love to swim. Bathing cleanses the skin and strengthens the plumage. Bathing water should be at room temperature. The bathing suit is attached to the outside of the door so that water does not get into the cage. After each bath, the bathing suit is cleaned and the doors are closed. Bathing suits should be washed daily. Canaries must be taught to bathe with early age, i.e. from the moment of their jigging from the female - after 30-35 days of age.

After disinfection, the cage and inventory must again be thoroughly washed, scalded, wiped and dried. Dry chamomile is poured under the pallet and inserted into its original place. Clean, dry river sand, a thin layer of crushed eggshells from a boiled egg are poured onto the pallet (bottom of the cage). Sand and eggshell serve as a mineral feed for the bird, maintain its health and promote digestion. After that, feed is poured into the feeders and placed in the feeding place.

Drinking water should be at room temperature. It is poured into small glass or porcelain dishes (3-4 cm high) and placed on the bottom of the cage in a place convenient for drinking birds. Between the twigs of the cage, you can insert small feeders in the form of a thimble or a plastic cork for periodic feeding with honey, grated carrots, and yolk in addition to the main food.

The cage is placed in a well-lit place, but not in the sun, not on a window and not in a draft. If the room closes, you can and should let the bird fly. Initially 5-10 minutes, and then up to 40-45 minutes. You can teach a bird to sit on your hand, on your shoulder, but this requires a lot of patience. Cages with canaries need to be approached so that the birds see you: talking to them in an even, gentle voice, you will win the trust of the bird, you can even teach them to sit on your hand.

Selection

Canaries have been breeding in cages for hundreds of years. The body of a domestic canary is very plastic. By changing the feeding conditions, you can make the canary change the color of its plumage.

In their homeland, vivo, in wild canaries, the breeding season begins in the 2nd half of March. Best time for mating and breeding chicks in our conditions - spring (March, April, May). During this period, there is a longer daylight hours, and the female can feed the chicks longer. To obtain good offspring, it is necessary to carefully select the male and female. The male must be large interesting song, beautiful plumage, active. Age - not less than 1 year. The female must also have the appropriate qualities. It is advisable to pair males from one and a half to two years and even up to five years, and females - from 11 months to three to four years. The coloration of the offspring is influenced by both producers, and the male influences the vocal qualities, susceptibility to the song and hearing. This should also be taken into account when choosing a pair.

Some amateur canary breeders practice breeding one male with two or three females and still get normal broods, but this requires great experience. A more accessible way is to bring one male to one female. Before mating, a cage with a male and a cage with a female are placed side by side so that the birds can see each other and begin to show mutual interest. The male during this period daily, for 5-6 days, is given soft food in addition to grain. Increase the diet and females. Ready for mating birds are planted in one cage. The male is planted first, and after a day or two, the female is planted next to him. By this time, the male will get used to the new environment. The female released to the male quickly mates with him and proceeds to build a nest. From the start of mating and nest building to the laying of the first egg, it takes from three to ten days.

The mating cage can be regular or slightly larger. The nest can be hung in the corner of the cage from the inside or outside, in a quiet place. In nature, canaries have a cup-shaped nest, and therefore amateur canary breeders make an artificial nest of the same shape or a nest base, usually made of clothesline.

So that the female can safely build a nest, she needs to put pieces of chopped cotton or linen threads 2-3 cm in size, small pieces of linen or cotton fabric and even well-dried small hay collected in a ball into a cage. Within 6-7 days, the female builds a nest, after which she begins to lay eggs. As soon as the first egg is laid, it is necessary to remove the remaining building material, fill in fresh sand, clean the cage from the accumulated construction debris. This is done because sometimes the female continues to build the nest and breaks the egg in the process. You can not change the location of the nest or rearrange the cage after the female lays the egg and especially after the chick or the brood is fully born. If there is an extreme need for this, it must be done very carefully and only at night. There were cases when the female left the nest, stopped feeding the chicks. Egg laying can last 4-6 days. After the female lays 3-4 eggs, the male is removed from the cage, as the female herself can feed the chicks. But you can leave the male, and he will actively help the female in hatching and feeding the chicks.

The female canary incubates the chicks for 13 days. Males also take part in incubation of eggs. At the moment when the female leaves for feeding, he replaces her. On the 14th day, the chicks hatch from the eggs. 3-4 hours after the appearance of the chicks, the female begins to feed them. Both parents also feed the chicks from the beak. There are times when the male destroys the nest, throws out eggs and even chicks. Such a male should be removed immediately. The main thing is that there should always be grain soft food in the feeders. At this time, in addition to the grain mixture, the female is given soft food - a mass of boiled eggs with pounded crackers.

The cubs that have flown from the nest initially seem clumsy, inept. On the 24-28th day after hatching, the chicks separated from their parents find and eat soft and grain food well. Young male canaries on the 35-37th day after leaving the nest begin to sing (chirp). The sounds made by the young male are deep, long and continuous. The "singing" of a young female is higher, short and jerky, with large pauses. This period of "singing" in young birds is very short: 10-12 days before the start of molting. In the period of growing up, you need to determine the sex of the birds. Males usually begin to chirp by puffing out their goiter, and females make a “tiv-tiv” sound. Identified males need to be deposited, each in a separate cage, and females can be kept together in one cage. Young males at the age of 5-6 months begin to sing in an incomplete and weak voice, and by 8-9 months they reach their full voice. In a good kenar, the song is fully strengthened only by the age of two.

Large bird. Length up to 65 cm. Wingspan - 1.2-1.5 meters. Weight 0.8-1.5 kg. Painted completely in black with a metallic sheen. The goiter feathers are elongated, lanceolate. Young birds are dull black. The colors of the male and female are the same. The tail is wedge-shaped, unlike the crow.

In the spring, they often sell just emerging from hibernation water or ordinary (land) snakes. Awakening from hibernation occurs in March-April. In nature, with the onset of warm spring days snakes crawl out of their wintering places and begin to lead a more active lifestyle, basking in sunny places. Entrepreneurial people catch them and sell them at the Bird Market under the guise of specially bred snakes raised in captivity. In inexperienced terrarium owners, such snakes most often die. The family of snakes has about 2000 species. Common snakes, land snakes and water snakes are not poisonous and are completely safe for humans. wishing keep snake in a terrarium It's best to buy it from a pet store.

The name "terrarium" is similar to the name "aquarium". The name of the aquarium comes from the Latin word "aqua" - water. An aquarium is used to keep fish and aquatic species animals. The name terrarium comes from the word "terra", which means earth. The terrarium is used for keeping terrestrial animals at home.
Keeping snake at home allows the animal lover to observe the life and behavior of his pet, care for him, trying to create ideal conditions for a long life.

The terrarium should be located in a bright and sunny place in the apartment. Your pet's home should be as spacious and well ventilated as possible. To keep the land snake, place small snags or branches in the terrarium, arrange secluded places. For a water snake in a terrarium, a large body of water is needed. Shelters can be built from broken flower pots. The bottom should be lined with a material that retains moisture, such as moss, which can be bought at a pet store. The lighting of the terrarium should correspond to the natural one in intensity and daily rhythm. Powerful heating should provide a constant temperature of 24-26 degrees during the day and about 18 degrees at night.

You can buy a ready-made terrarium or make it yourself using a large old aquarium of at least 100 liters. In it, one side glass should be replaced with plywood, in which holes with small diameters of 3-4 mm should be pre-drilled to ensure good ventilation so that damp air does not stagnate. From above, you need to make a cover from a very fine mesh, so that the snake cannot get out. On the plywood wall, you can install an incandescent lamp or a special heater for heating. The heating device must be protected with shallow plastic mesh to keep the snake from getting burned. The metal mesh is not suitable in this case, as it will heat up. On the side wall attach a thermometer. You should also take care of the stability of the water container and facilitate the annual molting of the snake. To pull off the old skin, the snake must be able to rub against specially laid large stones.

A novice lover of keeping snakes in the house should know in advance how to feed the snake. Water snakes eat mainly frogs, sometimes small ones. live fish. Land snakes also eat mice. Previously, in Ukrainian and Belarusian villages, some owners kept snakes in the house to kill mice. The snakes live well in captivity, quickly begin to take the food offered to them and soon become completely tame.
You can buy snake food at a pet store or at the Bird Market. But buying food on the market is risky, as you can infect snakes with helminths. You need to feed the snakes once every three to four days. Food frogs should not be too large, otherwise a blockage of the digestive tract may occur, and the snake may die. For a thirty-centimeter snake, one frog about 4 cm long or two smaller ones is needed at a time. You can feed the snake both live and thawed food, but thawed fish can only be given occasionally, and only whole. He will deal with live food himself, and you will have to take thawed food with tweezers, bring it head first and shake it slightly - the snake reacts only to moving objects. The snakes drink a lot.

A lover who keeps snakes at home should be ready for the time of the annual molt. A sign of approaching molting is clouding of the snake's eyes. At the moment of molting, due to cloudy dead scales in front of the eyes, the snake sees very poorly. At this time, the snake can be photographed without harm to his health (in regular time flash is very harmful for snakes), however, during the molting period, the snake becomes more aggressive, it can confuse your hand with food or an enemy and bite. Ordinary land and water snakes are not poisonous, but the wound can become inflamed from a bite. Therefore, if you have already been bitten, expand the wound and let the blood drain.
The snake may not be able to shed the old skin completely. If rags appear on the skin, this is an alarming sign. This means that the owner of the snake made mistakes in its maintenance and nutrition. It is necessary to help the snake shed: make him a warm (non-hot) bath, and when the skin gets wet, remove it with neat rotational movements. If, when removing the skin from the head, the keratinized scales do not come off the eyes, they must be carefully removed with tweezers. Subsequently, you need to contact a specialist for advice.

In nature, snakes fall into hibernation, and therefore it is worth providing the snake with wintering in captivity. To do this, it is necessary to lower the temperature in the terrarium to two to fifteen degrees for four to five months, that is, turn off the internal heater and, perhaps, move the terrarium to a cooler room (on a loggia) or put it on a windowsill. During wintering, make sure that the temperature in the terrarium falls gradually and does not fall below plus two degrees.
You can meet a water snake not only in the market or in a pet store, but also near swampy reservoirs. Real snakes are relatively small snakes. The common terrestrial snake differs from other snakes in the presence of behind-the-ear spots of yellow or orange, less often white. Its dimensions are usually no more than a meter. Coloration from gray to black. The water snake has an olive-yellow color, it has no behind-the-ear spots, and dark spots similar to a viper's pattern are located on the back in a checkerboard pattern. Although the viper has a zigzag pattern. Many people mistakenly consider the snake to be poisonous and cannot distinguish it from the viper. In snakes, the head smoothly passes into the body, while poisonous snakes have wide protruding cheekbones due to the presence of poisonous glands. The body of the snake passes into the tail smoothly, and poisonous snake with visible contraction. The pupils of the water snake, like those of the land snake, are round, those of the viper are narrowed vertically.

In any case, do not rush, having met a snake in the forest or on the shore of a reservoir, take it in your hands to examine it, believing that it is a land or water snake. Also, do not beat the snake with a stick, thinking that it is

Author - Vasily Dyadichko.
I will tell you about my experience of keeping and breeding these snakes, maybe it will be useful to someone.

I kept and repeatedly successfully bred 2 types of real snakes - ordinary Natrix natrix (including subspecies N. n. persa) and water snake Natrix tessellata. Both species are very common (in some places - even massive) in the Odessa region, so it was not difficult to catch them.
Both species initially lived in groups of 2 males per 1 female in 70x40x40 cm terrariums, then I kept two such groups (3 snakes of each species) in a 120x45x50 terrarium, then only a couple of water snakes lived there. There were no conflicts between them, these snakes can be safely kept in groups. They often form large clusters in nature.
The largest of my snakes were about 120-130 cm long (both species).
The soil in the terrarium was fine gravel (fraction 5-10 mm) - after reading the article by A.V. Ognev about non-rhodia, I was afraid that snakes could swallow something along with food and used this particular type of soil, since in that article it was recommended as the safest. I can fully confirm the validity of this opinion, pebbles of this size are heavy enough to fall off the wet skin of a fish or amphibian during its ingestion by a snake. During the years (1996-2007) that I kept snakes, not one of them ever swallowed soil particles with food.
Spacious pools were installed in the terrariums (in those that are smaller - 35x25x10 cm, in the large one - 40x30x15 cm), snakes spend a lot of time in them. The pool has always been placed in a cold corner. Beneath the pools was an empty space, loosely filled with sphagnum, which the snakes used as a hiding place. Other shelters were pieces of bark and cavities under flat stones located in different parts terrarium (so that the snakes can choose a shelter with desired temperature and humidity). Periodically (once a day or every 2-3 days) I sprayed the terrarium with water from a spray bottle.

As decorative elements I used all sorts of stones and driftwood, at first I planted terrariums with scindapsus, syngonium, tradescantia and chlorophytum, later I refused live plants, although they grew well there. In landscaped terrariums, fluorescent lamps with a power of 20-40 watts served as a source of illumination. Heating was carried out by incandescent lamps. In terrariums without living plants, I did not put special lighting lamps, I limited myself to an incandescent heating lamp. Its power was selected so that under it there was a temperature of 30-40 degrees. In the hottest time (July-August), heating was not turned on, because. it was warm enough at my house anyway (see the description of my experience with verdigris in another topic of this forum). Under the heating on the ground lay several wide flat stones and there was a snag with spreading branches, the snakes basked either on these branches, or under them, on the stones.
Snakes are diurnal snakes, so they need ultraviolet rays, I just exposed mine to the sun in a mesh bag by an open window in the room.
Between November and March, I put my snakes for the winter in the vegetable compartment of the refrigerator, in boxes of sphagnum. He began preparing for wintering in October and carried out in the following order:
The first week is the cessation of feeding, the snakes are kept under the usual mode of heating and lighting (8-12 hours a day);
The second week - a gradual reduction in the operating time of the heating and lighting (if any) lamp, by the end of the week, heating and lighting were no longer turned on;
Third week - snakes live at room temperature (18-22 degrees) and are content with the light from the window;
Fourth week - in the first 3-4 days, the snakes are in the terrarium, with the window open at night (the temperature drops to 14-15 degrees), then - in wintering boxes on the loggia with windows constantly open (temperature is about 10-12 degrees). AT last days October - the first days of November, I put boxes with snakes in the refrigerator.
The exit from wintering was carried out in March. At first, for 3-5 days, he took out the wintering boxes to the loggia, but already with the windows closed (8-12 degrees), then he placed the snakes in an unheated terrarium, after another 3-4 days he turned on the heating and began to give food.
I used frogs and toads as food for ordinary snakes, some of them also ate fish (gobies) in small quantities. My snakes ignored the toads. My water snakes never ate frogs, but they willingly ate toads, I mainly fed them with fish (gobies, crucian carp, loach, bleak, less often - atherina and pelingas). Toad gave water snakes occasionally, more in the spring, for a change. I gave only live amphibians, fish - both live and frozen. All my water snakes easily began to take frozen fish, literally from the second or third feeding.

Feed was given every 5-7 days, depending on the size and condition of the snake and the amount of food eaten. Snakes are very voracious, especially water snakes, but their voracity is largely offset by high mobility and fertility - my females almost always brought 2 clutches a year, several times there were even 3 clutches. Therefore, I was not afraid to overfeed my snakes, although I gave the males somewhat less food than the females. On average, a male common grass snake 60-80 cm long received from me 1-2 frogs or toads 4-5 cm long or 3-4 smaller ones per week. For a female of the same size, I gave 2-3 larger amphibians or 5-6 small ones, respectively. Large female snakes received 2-3 big frog or toads a week.
Male water snakes of medium size (60-80 cm) received 3-4 fish 5-8 cm long or 1-2 larger fish per week, females - 5-6 or 3-4, respectively. Large females of this species (more than a meter long) ate 3-5 fish 10-15 cm long per week.
Breeding ordinary and water snakes in my opinion is very simple. After the removal from wintering, I planted males and females in different terrariums and waited for the first molt of all individuals, then I put the snakes (males to females) and they immediately began to mate. Mating was repeated many times until the second molt, then stopped. According to my (and not only mine) observations, the landing of two males on one female significantly enhances their sexual activity, they mutually stimulate each other.
Pregnancy in my conditions lasted 32-50 days; for laying eggs, I placed a flat box with a side entrance filled with wet sphagnum in a warm corner of the terrarium. The record number of eggs laid by me by a female grass snake with a body length of 130 cm at a time was 35 pieces (not counting unfertilized eggs). The largest female water snakes laid up to 25-30 eggs. It is well known that snakes can delay the laying of eggs ready for this for up to a month, hence the variation in the duration of pregnancy and the timing of incubation. I carried out the incubation in a homemade incubator from a 30-liter tank. At the bottom of the tank was poured 10 cm of water, it contained plastic boxes with eggs buried in wet sphagnum and covered with pieces of bark or plywood on top. If the moss started to dry out, I moistened it with a spray bottle. From above, the tank was closed with a home-made plywood lid with a small mesh window for ventilation and a hole for a wire, on which an incandescent lamp with a power of 25-40 W was suspended. Eggs were examined every 7-10 days. The temperature in the incubator ranged from 25 to 30 degrees, the eggs of the second clutch, which fell on the hottest time of the year, I incubated without heating, room temperature was enough. The average duration of incubation for me was about 35 days (minimum - 26, maximum - 48). Young stock yield was often 100% and never less than 50%. Most I let the young natural places habitation of snakes, some used to feed copperheads.

Repeated matings took place without any stimulation and I rarely had a chance to observe them. More often than not, I simply found that the female was pregnant again. The second and, especially, the third clutches were always smaller in size than the first, often they had more unfertilized eggs.
According to my observations, snakes are very mobile snakes, they spend a lot of time in active movement in a terrarium, swim in a pond, crawl along snags. The negative side of this feature is the very rapid contamination of the glass of the terrarium. The snake climbs into the pond, then stands on the glass, stretches to its full length until it falls sideways, while running a wet body across the glass (in the manner of a car wiper). As a result, all glasses get dirty very quickly, they have to be washed constantly. Otherwise, in my opinion, these are very interesting and pleasant animals to keep.