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Keeping and Breeding the Trinket Ratsnake Coelognathus helena

These snakes are a joy to keep. They are attractive, undemanding, breed readily, and feed eagerly. To the best of my knowledge, there are no new wild caught stock coming in, so these are a great breeding project to keep this species available for future hobbyist. I'll go into the details of how I keep them, but bare in mind there are probably many methods for successfully keeping and breeding this species.

As far as housing goes, I keep it fairly simple. They always have access to a moist hide box on the cool end and a dry hide box, too. I keep them in well ventilated tubs in the mid to upper 70s. Heat tape is used to create a small basking spot in the low 80s. I will turn the basking spot off if the room hits 80, but it rarely does as I set an air conditioner to the upper 70s during the summer months. Aspen seems to work as a substrate and I am sure paper would work fine, too. The moist hide box I feel is important to ensure proper shedding and because these snakes will generally lay several clutches per year.

Breeding is very simple. Feed them enough food items and pair them up on a regular basis. My adult male only eats hopper mice while the female will take several hoppers or a small adult mouse. I have not found any need to cool these snakes. The eggs take quite a while to hatch in the upper 70s to 80F but I generally get good hatching results During periods where I did not pair them up for an extended period, I have also gotten some infertile eggs so I wouldn't count too heavily on sperm retention alone. I have used vermiculite at 50/50 with water by weight.

The babies seem to prefer small live mice to start. If you're going to breed this species, I would plan on having a weekly supply of pinkies on the smaller side and then transitioning them over to f/t, but you may get lucky and have some that take f/t right away though I am confident you will have plenty that do not.


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