How I Incubate Kingsnake Eggs

Once I am certain the female is done laying, I will usually get her out of the laybox if she hasn't come out on her own. I will then gently palpate her to check there is in fact no more eggs. Once I'm confident she has emptied them out I gather the eggs from the laybox. Careful not to change the orientation I found them in. Sometimes I will try to separate them so they're not just a giant blob of eggs. However, sometimes that is not possible and I will just place the whole lump in an incubation box.

For incubation box I use small plastic tubs and use moist perlite for a substrate. I choose locking tubs, because in past years I have had the babies get out of the snap-on top incubation tub and found them just cruising around in the incubator. 

I am a just a small hobbyist breeder so my actual incubator is a very simple design. A cooler, some heat cable, and thermostat is all you really need. The temperatures you're trying to achieve are like 75-80 degrees F. The supplies I listed are very affordable and this setup has hatched hundreds of snakes for me over the years. Plus if I run out of room in one cooler I can just set up another one. This adds some failure domains to the operation so all your eggs aren't literally all in one basket. 

Cooler incubator

Heat cable and thermostat keep temps dialed in

Technically if your room or somewhere in your house is in the high 70's you can just put the incubation box on a shelf or on top of a fridge, etc. Most colubrid snakes are VERY simple to incubate. Granted I have no fans to circulate air or fancy stuff like that in my setup. But again, this is a hobby for me, I love checking on them during the process which allows for some air exchange almost daily. I candle them every couple weeks throughout the process to monitor them.

I have found using the temperature I mentioned above, the incubation time is a little bit shorter opposed to leaving it on a shelf somewhere. The cooler/heat tape combo keeps the temperature stable enough and warm enough for my eggs. If you look at kingsnakes in the wild and where they lay their eggs, you'll see it just needs to be warm enough, but not too warm. The mom just deposits them in a safe enough spot with decent enough temps, and bam they hatch. Another thing to keep in mind is the eggs need high humidity, but you do not want them getting wet or submerged. Believe it or not, but they need to breathe. This is why I use the moist perlite for substrate in the incubation box. The eggs just sit on this substrate. 

The cooler in the photos houses three clutches of kingsnake eggs. Some are getting very near their expected hatch date. This is one of the most exciting times of year for me as a keeper of kingsnakes. You work all year to see what comes out of these eggs. Usually you kind of know what to expect, but there can be a big surprise anytime!

Keeping and interacting with these kingsnakes is a fun and rewarding hobby in and of itself. I can't imagine not having at least one of these guys. But watching them reproduce is on another level altogether.

Hybino FL Kingsnakes Incoming!

I bred my hypo het T- albino female (Asia) to my T- hybino male (Achilles) this spring. I got this pair a few years back from Scott McFarlane with the hopes of raising them up and creating more hybinos. The hybino is a gorgeous looking morph combination. Scott is also a well regarded breeder of Florida kings. I have no buyers remorse. These snakes are beautiful and really easy to care for. There was no issues raising them up. They always ate well and grew rapidly. Kingsnakes are just such great snakes to keep. They are very undemanding if you can manage to meet a few simple parameters. Once you have those parameters dialed in, you are almost guaranteed success.

This pair actually was slow to start the breeding this spring. But eventually I saw several locks. A couple of these locks lasted for hours. So I was pretty confident my gal would be gravid. I fed very well after the pairings to ensure my female had the nutrition required for some healthy eggs. When she shed in early June I had a nice lay box with moist sphagnum moss inside ready for her. I checked her daily for eggs. She really liked the box, but after two weeks went by and no eggs, I was beginning to get a little worried about her. This was her first time breeding and I would have hated to see her fall victim to egg-binding. 

Finally on Thursday June 26th, when performing my daily check on her in the morning I saw her in the process of laying. She already had a few eggs in the box, but was still working on depositing more, so I left her to do her thing while I went to work. When I got home I rushed in to check on her again. She was out of the box and looks to be empty of eggs. So I got the box out and found 8 good eggs and no slugs. SWEET!

I prepared a small tub with moist perlite, a label, and placed them in the incubator. Now we play the waiting game and hope all of them make it to hatching. I will probably give them a week in the incubator and then candle them to ensure they are all good eggs. But they looked pretty good from what I have seen so far. This should be a great looking clutch. I am beyond excited to hatch these ones. Of the eight eggs, we can expect four hybinos. And four hypo, het albino babies per the genetic calculator. I would not mind keeping this entire clutch, but I will probably let a few of them go. I want to have room for other babies from other projects too.

Stay tuned for progress reports on these and other clutches as well.

My "Expensive" Snake Finally Laid Eggs!

 Several years ago I wanted to add some of the lavender gene to my collection. I already had a T- hybino male who is pretty stunning. And I had several of the other available morphs you can find in Florida kingsnakes. But the lavender gene has always been attractive to me. When I came across an ad for a multi-gene female I snapped her up. She is supposed to be 100% het lavender. She is also hypo, mosaic, and whiteside. I named her Leto and began raising her up. 

She is definitely the most expensive kingsnake I ever thought about purchasing. Probably twice the price of any other snakes I currently own. But I have no regrets. When I purchased her I also got a male hypo, mosaic, 100% het lavender to go with her. One of my dream snakes (I have a lot of dream snakes) has been the lavender hybino mosaic. Which if you have ever seen one, its just a mind blowing combination of Florida kingsnake morphs.

After several years of feeding and cleaning up poop, which is like 99% of keeping and breeding these fascinating animals, I finally felt they were old/large enough to try breeding them. This may have been the only time I was truly nervous about pairing some snakes. Obviously as the name dictates, these snakes are known to like to eat other snakes. My male, Ares, achieved a fairly larger size than Leto this pricy female. And Leto my pricey female has a psychotic feeding response. Nonetheless I went for it and paired them this spring. 

I turn the heat off and just let them hang out with an ambient temp from around December to February. My snakes share my home office with me so it doesn't get very cold, probably 68-72F during this time. So there is no real brumation. But they definitely slow down, eat way less, and get a lot less sunlight for these couple months. About Valentine's day I kick the heat back on. In a couple weeks their appetite and normal routines return in full force. 

At this point I make their introductions. Initially there was nothing really happening and they seemed uninterested. So I was second guessing their sexes and thought about re-sexing them using probes. But I'm lazy and just kept pairing them every few days. Then one day when I went to seperate them I noticed Ares was firmly locked onto Leto. YES!!!! I continued pairing them every couple days for a few weeks. There were several good locks observed. So I was confident my male, Ares had done his job dutifully. 

After a couple months of feeding her very well I was starting to think Leto didn't take. But she definitely looked gravid. She was not interested in food during last week's feeding which is really odd for her. It had been over 2 weeks since her "pre-lay shed" so I was starting to get worried thinking she may be egg-bound. Then last week she dropped one dozen nice looking eggs. None appeared to be slugs while I moved them from lay box to incubation box. 

So now it is just another waiting game to find out if they hatch and if in fact Leto/Ares are both 100% het lavender. At a minimum I am confident the whole clutch will be hypo mosaics, so that's cool in and of itself. 

After Leto laid her eggs I gave her a day to rest up. Then I checked to see if she was hungry. Big surprise, she was super hungry! One good thing is she eats so well I feel pretty confident about getting her up to condition for next year.

2025 Breeding

 For 2025 I had several females ready to breed and was excited to get them paired with my males. I have a pair of eastern kingsnakes that are het albino. So I definitely wanted them paired up. I love the look of an albino eastern king. So I paired my male Apollo with his girlfriend, Hestia. Initially I didn't see much in the way of romantic activity. But after a couple attempts they clicked and I witnessed a lock. I continued pairing for a couple weeks. 

A few weeks later I could tell Hestia was indeed gravid. On May 2, 2025 while cleaning cages, I opened her enclosure to find 23 eggs. Some were obviously not going to make it. But I think I have 18 good ones in the incubator and they should be hatching in a couple weeks. 

These eggs look like she may have laid them a bit early as they were still connected via a little threadlike piece of egg shell. Kind of like a string of pearls. They are also very small eggs, but I candled them a couple times and they have strong veins which have only grown more prominent during the incubation process. So fingers crossed that we see a couple albino eastern kingsnakes arrive just after fourth of July.

Another pairing I was very excited about is my lavender hybino, mosaic project. Leto, the female is a gorgeous whiteside, hypo, mosaic, het lavender Florida kingsnake. Her mate, Ares is a hypo, mosaic, het lavender male Florida kingsnake. The triple combo of lavender, hypo, mosaic makes for a crazy cool looking snake. I paired them several times without seeing a lock, but on like the fourth pairing I saw a definitive lock. I continued pairing for a week or so. 

I honestly wasn't sure she was gravid until just a few weeks before laying. I feed the females pretty heavily during the breeding season to ensure they have the nutrition they need to produce healthy eggs. It eventually became obvious she was gravid and several weeks later I found her in her lay box busy depositing eggs.

She laid a dozen pretty good sized eggs. She is a eating machine so I made sure to remove the eggs promptly after she finished in the hopes I could prevent her from eating any of them. I don't think she managed to scarf any down though. Keep your fingers crossed for me that the odds gods smile upon me and give me a few triple combos in this clutch. Actually, lets just hope we can get them all to term.

Another pairing that has me hyped is my T- albino hybino project. This pair consists of my male T- hybino, Achilles, and my hypo, het T- albino, Asia. Again when I paired them the first couple times there was no hint of romance. But on about the third or fourth introduction, boom! I had a confirmed lock. I continued pairing for a couple more weeks and saw a couple more locks. I am 95% sure Asia is gravid at this point and I expect her to be laying any day now. I will update when she does.

The fourth pairing is a repeat breeding of my axanthic male, Zeus and a het axanthic female, Clio. They have produced some nice looking babies for me in the past. But the axanthic babies all popped male so I kept none of them. I would like to hatch a female axanthic which I would hold back and raise up.

Stay tuned for updates on the results of these pairings/clutches. I will try to post regular updates.