Breeding and Incubation Management Technique of Meat Snake

Snakes usually reach sexual maturity at the age of 2 to 3, and the season of oestrus is in the spring of each year. Most of them begin to mate when they molt their skin for the first time after waking up from hibernation every year. Since the sperm of a male snake can survive in the female for several years, the female can mate up to 3 or 4 times in her lifetime. Adequate food should be fed during the mating and breeding season. When nearing the spawning period, the female and male snakes that have already laid eggs should be kept separately to keep quiet and avoid all kinds of disturbance. Snake spawning period is about July to August, during this period, as soon as snake eggs are found, they should be collected and hatched artificially, and should not be exposed to the sun, so as not to affect the hatching rate. Female snakes with eggs can also be locked up in a snake box to lay eggs. The collected snake eggs can be hatched artificially. In order to improve the hatching rate of snake eggs, artificial hatching is generally used.

So how to hatch snake eggs artificially?

The primary choice of fresh snake eggs, snake eggs to be full and flexible, not dry, no damage is better. If you use earthen pots or wooden boxes and baskets as incubators, the inner cushion of fine sand is about 30 cm thick, the sand is about half the volume of the tank (or bucket), and the ratio of sand to soil is 3:1. Put the thermometer horizontally in the cylinder (barrel) to control the hatching temperature in the cylinder (barrel), generally between 17 and 27 ℃. The humidity is generally between 90% and 95%. If you do not have a hygrometer, you can follow the principle of "squeeze the sand into a mass by hand and disperse the sand immediately after it is loosened". This humidity is more suitable.

Then put the snake eggs horizontally in the incubator (bucket) and note that the snake eggs must not be placed vertically. In order to keep the snake eggs fresh and moist, cover some mosses or lotus leaves, sycamore leaves and other things on the snake eggs. In order to maintain the corresponding temperature and humidity during the development of snake eggs, the fresh mulch should be measured and checked frequently in the process of hatching. When the temperature in the cylinder (barrel) is lower than 17 ℃, the cylinder mouth (or barrel mouth) can be covered with old clothes, sacks or wooden lids to keep warm. When the temperature is higher than 25 ℃, sprinkle some water into the incubator, but be careful not to wash the snake eggs with water and turn the eggs every other day. During the hatching process, the snake eggs should be checked frequently. The method of checking snake eggs: dig a hole slightly smaller than the snake eggs on a board, put the eggs behind the hole, and observe in front of the light or sunlight. If it is found that the eggs have not changed, the eggs of the snake should be picked out. If the normal egg embryo can see the vascular reticulation. If the vessel on the surface of the snake egg is not reticulate, but spotted, the spot does not spread after one week, the egg shell hardens after half a month, and then mildew spots appear outside the egg shell, this kind of egg embryo belongs to metaphase death and should be detected; if the egg embryo is moldy and withered within one week, then the snake egg belongs to unfertilized egg and should be eliminated in time. Due to the different species of snakes, the incubation time of snake eggs is also different, ranging from 25 days to 55 days. Snake eggs can hatch after 45-47 days, and cobra eggs can hatch after 55-57 days. Hatched snakes should be picked out and raised in a mud tank filled with sand at the bottom, providing food and drinking water to make them grow and peel.