This is one of my favorite snakes and we are living kinda right in the middle of their territory here in Thailand. We can basically go North, East, South or West and we can encounter a handfull of subspecies and even some locality animals. Being that we really enjoy exploring caves, that also increases the odds that we might encounter one of these species and also possibly something a little different.
NATURAL HISTORY
This non-venomous colubrid snake comes from Asia and is comprised of several species. They are known as beauty ratsnakes but also have other common names depending on the species and their locality. Their colors vary as do their pattern or lack thereof. In the wild these snakes will eat bats, birds and are very opportunistic feeders. They are semi-arboreal and are frequently found in caves where many populations will thrive as it provides cooler temperatures, a steady source of food, and other snakes for which to mate and reproduce. In fact, I have seen enough in caves to where I see evidence of localized populations having a propensity to be a dominant color or hue. Some of these localites can reach 8’-9’ and they are simply a very magnificent animal.
CAPTIVE CARE/ACCLIMATION
These snakes actually do very well in captivity and the majority of those found in the hobby are captive bred. I have found that field collected Sumatran Beauties and ridleyi do quite well in captivity and the only hurdle I have experienced is whether an animal will take rodents or birds. Live or f/t usually makes no difference. These animals have good eyesight and can be easily agitated so I suggest providing hide boxes and limiting movement and visual cues(especially during feeding). They seem to prefer lower temperatures so I suggest warm spots no more then about 83-85f and cooler areas within the cages. We use cypress mulch or coconut husk for substrate with a large water bowl. These will sit off the ground so branches or platforms serving the purpose of something like a cave wall work well. There really is not too much more to say about caring for beauty rats as they are pretty straightforward.
BREEDING
The very first colubrid I ever bred were actually Taiwan Beauties in 1998. At the time I only fed my pair very hard and put them together to see if they were old enough to breed and as it turned out, they were. Since that time I have worked with and bred ridleyi and blue beauties and we have added Sumatrans and Chinese beauties to our breeding program. These snakes will breed quite readily and I usually will use a combination of food cycling and monitor follicle development. Females will almost always double clutch if you feed them enough after their first egg laying event. There are some very beautiful Chinese morph animals but also some hybrid morph animals so depending on your personal preferences, you can take your projects in different directions. We prefer to keep all of our animals pure and also even by locality if we have locality background.
ESTABLISHING BABIES
Depending on the size of the female, clutches can number from 6 to upwards of a dozen eggs. We incubate eggs in the low 80’s and eggs take about 60 days to hatch. Same as we have discussed in our Boiga video, we will wait for the first baby to pip and then will manually pip the remaining eggs but we do not pull babies from their eggs. One thing that is quite nice about establishing baby beauty rats is that they will almost always feed on live pinky mice on their own and usually will readily accept frozen thawed after a couple of meals. Another big plus for Orhtriophis
FINAL THOUGHTS
These truly are one of my favorites and we have babies and eggs incubating now in our Malaysia facility that will be sent over in our June shipment. We also are planning to expand our breeding program further by sourcing specific locality animals. Living in SE Asia gives us a good advantage in doing so as things continue to develop we will update you guys right here on our channel.