How to Raise Snakes? Detailed Guide to Building a Snake House and Raising Hatchlings

AbstractBuilding a snake house: build a multi-story, three-dimensional underground snake house of the building type, with an underground depth of 1-2m. Autumn and winter boarding: dig a pond and pile soil on it or cover it with corn stalks to help the snakes overwinter. Breeding and incubation: breeding takes place from early June to the end of August each year, with the incubation temperature controlled at around 20°C-27°C, humidity of 74%-95%, and incubation lasting about 25-55 days. Raising hatchlings: hatchlings only need water; after 5 days they can be fed foods such as insects and earthworms.

Snake meat is very delicious and is also a prized dish, and snake meat also has the effect of nourishing the body and strengthening the stomach. As everyone's living standards improve, consumption capacity and pursuits rise accordingly, and in recent years snake farming has become a good special breeding project.

1. Building a Three-Dimensional Snake House

1. Snakes need a safe and comfortable snake den, so you must build a multi-story, three-dimensional underground snake house of the building type for the snakes. The depth of the snake house must be 1m-2m underground, using ordinary bricks stacked layer by layer in a regular pattern to form a 9-14 layer underground snake house, which can provide the snakes with layered rooms to freely choose to live in.

2. After a snake has eaten its fill once, it will coil up continuously in its den for several days, and sometimes will not move for more than ten days, until the food in the snake's belly is completely digested, only then will it become active again and crawl out of the snake den to forage and drink.

3. The built snake house can expand the breeding area, increase the number of snakes, and moreover allows snakes to be caught at any time in early spring and deep winter to be sold on the market.

2. Autumn and Winter Boarding

1. In autumn and winter when snakes enter the hibernation period, collect the snakes and board them to be sold before they emerge from dormancy the following year. Every year in February and March the snake price is the highest, 2-3 times higher than usual.

2. First dig a pond 6m long, 2.5m wide and 1m deep, then on both sides of the pond dig several small square ponds 0.3m deep, then in the middle of the small ponds dig a ditch 0.4m deep, then place some wooden boards horizontally on top of the pond, pile on 1.5m of soil or cover the pond with corn stalks, and the snakes in the snake pond can safely pass the winter, and it is also more convenient for the keepers to enter and exit or to observe when feeding.

3. Snake Breeding and Incubation

1. After snakes reach sexual maturity, they generally begin mating at the first shedding after waking from hibernation each year.

2. A female snake needs to mate at most 3-4 times in her life, because the male snake's sperm can survive in the female snake's body for many years. The female snake lays eggs from early June to the end of August each year, about several to more than twenty eggs.

3. If incubating artificially, the temperature must be controlled at 20°C-27°C, and the relative humidity for incubation must be 74%-95%. Note that there are many snake species, so the incubation time of snakes differs; generally the shortest incubation time is 25 days, and the longest is about 55 days.

4. Raising Hatchlings

When raising hatchlings, you only need to provide drinking water and do not need to feed them, because the yolk in the hatchlings' bellies can sustain them for about 5 days. Once the yolk is consumed, the hatchlings' activity ability will gradually increase, and they can be fed some small insects, earthworms or small land frogs; after growing to a certain stage they can be fed together with the adult snakes.

5. Preventing and Treating Snake Diseases

Mold spot disease: use 2% concentration iodine tincture to swab the areas on the snake's belly scales where mold spots grow, swabbing twice a day, and it will heal after swabbing for one week.

Stomatitis: use physiological saline to rinse the sick snake's mouth, then use gentian violet solution to swab both jaws, rinsing and swabbing once each per day, until the snake's mouth inflammation subsides and the swelling goes down, then stop rinsing and swabbing.

Acute pneumonia: use powder of 800,000 units of streptomycin divided into 8 portions wrapped in frog skin, then feed it to the sick snake, then flush it down with clean water, feeding the sick snake 1-2 times a day, and it will heal after 3-4 days of feeding.

6. Mixed Medication

Snakes have strong resistance, but when snakes are raised artificially, the living area provided is not large, and for profit the density of snakes raised is sometimes relatively high, so you should inject 10 vials of 200,000 units of gentamicin, 2 vials of levamisole, 5 vials of dexamethasone, and 1 vial of vitamin B12.

The amount of water for injection is 100ml, which can be injected into 50 snakes weighing about 1kg each, and it must be injected 2 times in a row, which can prevent disease, expel parasites, and also provide nutrition to the snakes.

Also, in early summer and late autumn each year, deworm the snakes twice; you can put albendazole or tetracycline into the water pond, letting the snakes drink and bathe in it, which can achieve the deworming effect.