B. worthingtoni surprise.

Hi all,

I don't often get time to participate in these wonderful forums but I would like to post about my luck with breeding Bitis worthingtoni.

About 3 months ago I noticed my male B. worthingtoni courting the female. He was draped all over her body and making jerking movements. Needless to say, I watched for a long time and noticed the female did not seem very interested. She just lay curled up as usuual and had no response to the male's advances. I saw the same behaviour a few more times over the follwing weeks but not 'actual' copulation.

I was just hoping they 'did' it at some stage when i was not watching.....and obviously they did becase the female went off her food and grew very fat over the next months.

Yesterday I found this in the cage:






She gave 10 healthy babies and 5 stillborn and 2 slug eggs.

I can't describe how i feel now. They are beautiful!

Thanks for looking!

Well done!! Congratulations! I believe that reproductions of this specie is not often done in captivity!

Well done, they are gorgeous indeed!
Good luck with the little ones.

Cheers,
Harold

awesome keep us updated on them,and goodluck

Very nice and so beautiful!

Congratulation and good luck

Congratulations! cool little snakes, Love them

Very nice Craig,
would the neonates be started on lizards? Do you know if it is difficult to get this species on rodents? I have only seen a few and realize they are very small as adults. A friend, and forum member here, produced them once here in Canada.
Seen any Fisk's house snakes lately? A few years back we traded some emails about mole snakes and I remember you said you have only seen one Fiskii in the field, I would still love to get a pair or two.
John Q Pigott.

Thats INSANE !! Those Babies Look AWESOME !!!!

Congrats ,
that are really nice babies
Would be great to get a pair...,not easy to find this bitis species .
How old are your animals,are they Wc´s from a habitat in your near ?
Regards Ralph

Kenyabitis worthingtoni is a very interesting but also very difficult species, especially to breed them is not that easy. Most people do have problems with them, because males refuse to eat and olso females do not accept the food items everytime you offer them. Do know from another reproduction in captivety a few years ago, but in the meantime no one else had success....

I try it too and had a big potential breeding group, but it was extremely difficult to get them in a good shape and size so that they are ready for breeding. So I have never had the chance to put them together an try it.....

Interesting was that every Bitis species I worked with, did very well for me, even Bitis schneideri did good (at least the females), so it was very frustrating that Kenyabitis did not good here......and NOW Craig made it to breed them :-) So this is also for me a very good news and makes me ''hungry'' to try it again in the near future with Kenyabitis worthingtoni - maybe ;-) Maybe I have more luck then...

But anyway.....it is definitely only a species for a professional with experiences with the smaller Bitis complex - nothing for a beginner. Unfortunately most of the illegal from Kenya ''exported'' worthingtonis from the past 5-10 years ended up in the hands of people which had the money but NOT the experiences, and died very fast within weeks or some months. So most of the available animals where not in a good shape when I received them, maybe it would be easier to start with CB Babies. Would be great to hear from Craig how they do in the next time.....please keep us (me) posted - thanx :-)

Just my two cents
Cheers
Marco

Thanks for all the wonderful comments everybody!

John Q Pigott wrote:

Very nice Craig,
would the neonates be started on lizards? Do you know if it is difficult to get this species on rodents? I have only seen a few and realize they are very small as adults. A friend, and forum member here, produced them once here in Canada.
Seen any Fisk's house snakes lately? A few years back we traded some emails about mole snakes and I remember you said you have only seen one Fiskii in the field, I would still love to get a pair or two.
John Q Pigott.

Hi John, yes i remember our emails. I would like to hear from the forum member who bred B. worthingtoni before. What is his name?

Ralph Tümmers wrote:

Congrats ,
that are really nice babies
Would be great to get a pair...,not easy to find this bitis species .
How old are your animals,are they Wc´s from a habitat in your near ?
Regards Ralph

Hi Ralph, my animals were wild caught adults. I'm in South Africa so Kenya is very far.

Marco Buegel wrote:

Kenyabitis worthingtoni is a very interesting but also very difficult species, especially to breed them is not that easy. Most people do have problems with them, because males refuse to eat and olso females do not accept the food items everytime you offer them. Do know from another reproduction in captivety a few years ago, but in the meantime no one else had success....

Hi Marco, I like how your use the designated Subgenus name. Keniabitis sounds nice. I do/did have problems with the adult male eating. He does not eat well but i think he is one of those snakes that eat little. I have had it before with some species. The male worthingtoni only ate 6 times in 2008! All the time I have had him, he has always been in good condition and very full of life. Marco, if you work with this species again i hope you breed them. I may have a little experience but i think this breeding was also largely due to good luck.

Just a little update on the babies. It seems these babies are going to be difficult. I have been trying to tease feed them pink mouse legs. I have tried geckos with no interest at all.

It is very interesting that they do not responde to tail tapping at all! (as other small Bitis do like caudalis, peringuey, cornuta, etc).

They do respond quickly & easily to face/neck tapping, but are entirely un-happy with it. It seems they huff and puff a lot and often strike with the mouth closed. Then after a few seconds, the snake will act like Agkistrodon piscivorous and open the mouth facing up, from a coiled position. This is when i quickly place the pink leg in the mouth, as deep as i can.

The snakes immediately proceed to shake the food out. Most succeed in doing this, but on 2 occasions they failed, as the food had been hooked tightly by the teeth. On these 2 occasions the snakes eventually swallowed after trying in vain to shake the food. They seemed tired at this stage.

I do not want to stress them out too much by teasing too much. I will try to get lizards and continue trying natural prey for a little while. If the babies are not even interested in natural prey, I may resort to force-feeding small pink parts.

Each snake is in a plastic box in a drawer rack sytem. This is heated on one end, creating a nice heat gradient. Most of the time the baby snakes are on the warmest end. In each box I have a newspaper floor, and over this i put a similar sized and thick piece of crumpled/flattened of newspaper - this acts as a security under which they can retreat (which they do). I did not want to put them on any 'natural' substrate to keep foreign particles out the mouth when tease feeding with 'sticky' food.

I will post feeding updates and new pics as soon as i can.

@ Craig

Hehe, I like the status Kenyabitis worthingtoni.........I think it sound's much better then Bitis worthintoni - makes them more special ;-)) lol

Yes would be cool to try it again, but to be honest at the moment it is not very easy to get access to worthingtoni's. About 5-10 years ago they have been illegaly exported from Kenya on a regular base, but this stopped and because no one was breeding them you can only get single animals for high prices. Additionally most of the available animals are females, because they did a little bit better in captivety - so I don't think I will get another chance to work with them again soon :-/

Concerning the babies: I know that you have very very good experiences and knowledge in Bitis species from SA and Nam, and please don't get me wrong when I say this - but please do NOT force-feed them with pinkies or pinky-parts. That's the same Al from the USA did with his cornuta babies one or two years ago, and he lost almost all of them this way. I recommended him to force-feed them with a mixture of Hill's a/d and water.....but he decided to go the common way with pinkies and was not really interested doing it my way :-/
As you know have bred peringueyi and caudalis, and also had babies from an adult WC female peringueyi....and all of the I have force-feed with Hill's a/d and have never lost one single animal this way because it is less stressfull and it is done much faster. Additionally the Hill's meal ist much easier to digest and it's a lower risk that they regurgitate something. Babies that have regurgitated twice usually die soon, they loose energy, minerals and water......which is an extremely high physiological stress that leads to an early death !
Don't forget how small and delicate this little creatures are, they can not deal with unnecessary stress at all. Of course it is your thing and you decision, I just want to call attention to this again.

Whatever you decide or do, I just whish you the best of luck with them and that they grow fast and strong :-)

Cheers
Marco

Some of the nicest babies I've seen in a while. Excellent work.

Hi Craig. As John mentioned I managed to produce some offspring here in Canada several years ago. I aquired a pair of young (8" to 10") specimens from an importer in a trade in January 1999. I experimented with husbandry techniques for a while as I could find little information on the species and had no computer (or computer skills, much like now.) To my surprise they both fed ravenously on pinkies and finally went on to fuzzies, hoppers etc.. In May and June of 2000 I put the two animals together several times and though I saw no actual copulation they spent most of the time together and the male was constantly courting her. By mid-July the female's appetite started dwindling and she usually refused food when offered right up until her final meal on Nov. 3rd. She thermo-regulated in the final three months of gestation, sometimes basking with her lower body completely up-side-down. On Dec 6th 2000, 683 days after receiving them, the female gave birth to 2 slugs and 4.5 babies. One female baby died several hours after birth for no apparent reason. I set them up individually in deli-cups with multch, a small bark hide and a small water dish. After they shed (and several had bad sheds and had to be manualy helped) I started trying to get them to feed. Again, I had no information as to what they would eat so I tried crickets, mealworms, earthworms, tiny treefrogs, baby anoles and small house geckos and finally really small pinky mice. They showed no interest in anything. As I planned to give the four pairs to four fellow keepers as belated Christmas gifts, I brought all eight of them to one of the recipients whom was unemployed at the time and thus had more free time to dick around with these little buggers and hopefully get them feeding. No such luck ! He force-fed them little strips of beefheart but they slowly started dying off. Several died of apparent blister disease from too much ambient humidity and moisture in the substrate. Oh, but it gets better ! I was never able to get a second litter and in Sept 2003 the female developed a huge abdominal growth and died a few weeks later on the 13th of October. I gave the remaining male and an extra male I picked up in Jan '03 to a buddy who had a female that survived a OPMV outbreak and nothing ever came of that either. It's a real drag as I doubt I will ever get to work with this species again.
Craig, are you sure your pair didn't copulate prior to three months before birthing as this seems like an impossibly short gestation period. Maybe that's why she was not responding to his attention when you had them together three months ago. I would think somewhere in the 6 to 7 month range would be more like it. How long have you had them ?
Hope you have better luck than I did. (If I only knew then what I know now).
ps: I'm glad I keep record cards as there's no way I'de remember all this shit without them.
Cheers
Dave

Hi Craig,

congratulation to these beauties! Unfortunately, or let's better say fortunately (it would be very sad for this species), it is very very hard to get these stunning snakes. I know 2 people who keep them and one of them had babies of a gravid female (but he had no male). The female gave birth to 4 healthy little beauties, but he was out of success to get them to feed and they died within weeks.

Hi Marco,

hope you are fine!? You wrote something about Hills meal. Could you give me some more information? It seems that both of my Bitis peringueyi are gravid.

Best regards
Flo

Congratulations, very cute babies! Good luck with them

Best regards