30/08/2025
Our beautiful 2021 female blacktail, Autumn, a dream to handle. We'll see how next season goes when we try to pair our cribos for the first time.
Sometimes I get asked when snakes are ready to breed for the first time. There are many opinions on this. Some of it is just minor variation in the keeper's priorities and sometimes people's answers unfortunately show essentially no concern for the snake's well being and focuses entirely on maximum "production".
We generally wait until the female is approaching her 4th or 5th birthday before breeding her for the first time. We obviously focus on colubrids, so slower growing boas and pythons can be a different question. With the exception of individuals who are seriously undersized for the species even at maturity, we do not go by weight or length for determining if a snake is ready to breed. You can rush size, you cannot rush maturity.
Look at the size of Autumn's head in this picture. She didn't look like that even 6 months ago. After raising many, you can very easily see when a snake starts to get that bulky, muscular, robust look of a mature snake. This doesn't happen until the snake is well into their 4th and 5th year of life, regardless of how heavy the keeper feeds her. From our experience, waiting until the girls are actually looking "grown up" has resulted in much better body condition and recovery for the mothers and much bigger, more robust clutches of eggs. Our priority is always the mother's health and a bit of patience seems like a small price to pay.
