How to Care for Pueblan Milk Snake Babies

Video Transcript

"Hopefully, after about approximately sixty days the eggs will start to hatch. The amount of incubation time depends a lot on the temperatures. Generally it?s around fifty to sixty days of incubation time but it can vary depending on temperature fluctuations. Once the baby snake hatches out, it has an egg tooth on the tip of its snout that it will use to slit the shell. The snake will start coming out, and sometimes in some cases, the snake will actually stay within the egg for a day or so. This is completely normal, you don't have to worry, eventually the snake will make its way out of the egg. When it leaves the egg, leave the snake alone for a while. It's worked pretty hard to get out of its egg, it's tired, you don't want to stress it out. Also, the snake is going to be absorbing the egg yolk that's still in its stomach so you don't need to feed it right away; it's perfectly fine still in the incubator. Eventually, after a day or two, you want to remove the snake into another container. I use these small little animal habitat containers for hatchling Milk Snakes. Now, this is not a hatchling, she is actually about a year old. She is an Apricot phase Pueblan Milk Snake, you can see instead of white bands, she has orange-ish yellow bands. After a couple weeks, that egg yolk that's in the snake's stomach will be absorbed and then the snake will shed. Don't try feeding your snake until they've had their first shed. After this first shed you can try introducing frozen, thawed pinky mice. Sometimes baby snakes are kind of reluctant to eat, sometimes you have to scent them, especially Milk Snakes, since these guys are snake eaters and lizard eaters, you might have to scent your pinks with a lizard or another snake. But usually, if you're lucky, right away they'll start taking food. As babies, you'll want to feed them more often then the adults. I feed my baby Milk Snakes about every three to four days, one pinkie mouse. As they get larger they'll graduate to larger prey items to fuzzies, to hoppers, to eventually full grown mice."