Hello everybody!

This year seems to be a good year for me. At the 02.01.2012 one of my female Dendroaspis j. jamesoni made me a gift of four good and two unfertilized eggs! If the eggs will hatch this PROBABLY could be the first real captive breeding success ever with this species to my knowledge! If anyone knows anything different please feel free to share your knowledge.

One of my pairs. Both have the same length, but you can easily recognize the more massive head of the female below and the narrow head of the male above:



The facts: I currently keep a group of 3.3 adult Jamesons Mambas which are all WC´10/WC´11 from Cameroon and between 1.6-1.8m in length. The first animals consisting of 3.1 I got August 2010. They were quarantined for two month in which all of them defecated the remaining feathers of eaten small birds. To prevent the risk of bringing mites into my snakeroom, all were treated several times with Dichlorphos (although I didn´t find a single mite, but I´m maybe a little bit paranoid) and aganist helminths and other parasitic worms they were treated twice with Ivomec. During the quarantine time, two of the animals started to feed on dead mice, the others refused to feed. I didn´t try any birds, which might have made the others to feed as well. After quarantine I put a group of two adult males and one adult female together in a cage of 1,75 x 1,2 x 1,1 m. One male was semiadult when I got him, but grew from around 1,0 m to 1,6 m within one year. This male I kept separated from the others. I misted the animals five times a week and shortly after keeping them together one of the males showed strong mating behaviour with comment combat (which the other male wasn´t interested in at all). At the beginning of Oktober 2010 (I don´t know the exact date, I wrote it down somewhere), this male mated with the female, which was pretty thin at that time and I didn´t expect anything to come out of it. To my surprise the female started to sun bask more than the other animals, fed well and also became thicker in the lower part of the body. This resulted in two bad eggs which I found at the 20.11.2011 (one year later!!!). Not the success I wished.
In August 2011, I got two more adult females, which (after quarantine) I keep together in a cage of 1.5 x 1.2 x 0.7 m.

This is the cage in August 2011:



The same cage in December 2011, the plants already grew pretty well:



At the beginning of October 2011 the same male as the year before started to show mating behaviour with the same female as the year before, but I couldn´t observe any copulation. The mating behaviour of this male increased when the other male in the cage shed in the middle of October and comment combat behaviour could be observed by the same male as the year before, but still the other male wasn´t interested in comment combat at all. As I couldn´t observe any copulation I decided to introduce one of the new females into the cage, which was in pretty good shape. I was very happy to observe the coputation with this female at the 29.11.2011 from 20.00-22.10 o´clock.





The female started to bask a lot more than the other animals, which made me hope for more. As the cages are well-planted with a lot of possible suitable egglaying places and the danger of the other animals disturbing the pregnant female while egg laying, I decided to put her in a separate cage with a box filled with moist coconut substrate for the eggs.

To my big happiness I found this at the 02.01.2012:



I´m very proud of the female, the clutch consists of four good eggs and two unfertilized eggs. The good eggs have an average size of 59 mm x 28 mm, the smaller bad eggs of 36 mm x 20 mm.



I incubate the eggs at around 28,5 °C on Vermiculite. Now the waiting begins!

Some additional notes:

Dendroaspis j. jamesoni seems to be quite dependent on high air humidity. Low humidity during the wet season results in a much lower activity of my animals and a higher hiding behaviour with laying on the ground. With water spraying the animals immidiately start to climb around, show an agility not visible in animals kept too dry and spend most of the time laying or crawling through the branches. When imitating the dry seasons, which is also the coolest time of the year in their distribution area, they seem to prefer the heating spots on the branches, although the humidity is quite low during that time.

I heard an anecdotical report from one private zoo in Germany, which keeps Dendroaspis j. jamesoni since many years, that they got two clutches from their animals some years ago, but none of the eggs hatch because of an unusual thickness of the egg shell. The animal keeper thought, that it might have something to do with the wrong food (mice in captivity vs. birds in nature). The egg shell of the eggs I got from my female seems to be normally thick although she got only mice and rats for food, but I keep my fingers crossed.

Finally I can just say, that these animals are one of the most beautiful snakes in my eyes and watching their active behaviour can easily fill whole evenings.

Enjoy!



Best regards

Frank

Congratulation, Frank! Really nice result. I know how you feel now... Very nice!

We were lucky too to get nice group from this species last year, so I hope we will follow your result soon also with this species. In the meanwhile we are more as happy with 2 clutches of Dendroaspis jamesoni kaimosae, from first of which 7 nice healthy babies hatched (from 9 eggs) few days before end of last year. Second clutch needs approx. 6-7 more weeks yet, but I hope in the same result as with first one. May we wish all 11 babies hatch...

I love Dendroaspis jamesoni jamesoni a lot too, and am more as happy we got it into hands finally. It wasn`t easy at all.

One more time, congratulation and the very best luck with hatching of babies. I think at the end of March we can expect an update from you

congratz ! very nice mambas you got there! hope they hatch with good results

best regards

Well, these are some nice news and a good start of the new year and I can only say congratulations and I hope that the young mambas hatched in the near future.

You have also a nice terrarium for them
Nice pics as well and again congratz.

Good luck with them

Cheers,
Albert.

Congratulations on this special breeding Frank.
Very nice.
I can also appriciate the great discription very much. Thank you for that.
This is what fora are for.

Good luck with the incubation. Hope all goed well and you should have some nice young in the future.

Best regards

@ All: Thanks a lot for the congrats. Still the breeding success is not completed until the juveniles hatch, but a big part is done yet. I will let you know as soon as the first hatchling might pip the egg.

@Peter: Big Congratulations for your breeding success with Dendroaspis jamesoni kaimosae, this subspecies is still very seldom bred and in fact you are only the third person I ever heard of breeding these animals. Very nice result! If you find the time, it would be nice to see a breeding report from you.

Best regards

Frank

Frank, congratualtions and all the best with the eggs. A few years ago I got offered juvies of D.f.f. from a German guy associated with a reptile zoo that reportedly were captive breds, but unconfirmed. Anyway, good ones are difficult to get on the market, so all best wishes for yours.

Klaus

very beautiful greens, do you have babys allready??
best of luck

Hello!

Today is a good day... The Jamesons Mambas start to hatch! I will post pictures soon.

@ Klaus: I spoke to the same guy. He told me they offered the juveniles when the eggs were laid by the female, but unfortunately the eggs never hatched out.

Best regards

FRank

Congratulation, Frank!

Frank, ditto Peter i admire your work with large Elaps.
Congratulation's you have a lot of "Backbone".

Al.

Great job Frank!

good news frank! Congratz! keep us updated with pics when the youngsters come out

Thanks to all of you for the congrats, I feel really happy right now.

Some facts: The incubation until pipping the first egg took 87 days at around 28.5 °C and during that time the eggs grew from a mean size of 59 mm x 28 mm to a mean size of 60 mm x 35 mm. Of the four good looking eggs from the beginning three survived, with one breaking down at around the 30th day of incubation. After approximately two weeks of incubation I candled the eggs. All of them showed developement and blood vessels were clearly visible, with exception of the egg which broke down soon after. Therefore I assume it was unfertilized or the embryo died shortly after egg laying.
Anyway, three remaining eggs are better than nothing and yesterday I was were happy to find this situation:



I had to wait until today in the morning till the first animal left the egg, and during the night the second egg was pipped by the second hatchling. The third egg is still waiting but should be pipped within the next few hours. I didn´t measure and weight the first juvenile yet, but I was surprised by the size of it, approximately 45 cm. I can only speculate on the sex of it yet, but I assume it is a male. Exact data will follow soon. For first I proudly present the WORLDS FIRST REALLY CAPTIVE BRED DENDROASPIS JAMESONI JAMESONI EVER (to my knowledge!)!!! Enjoy!



Best regards

Frank

What a stunning snakes! Thank you for the very informative report and congratulations on the very good work.

Awesome! Congrats, man! It's definitely the first time I've ever heard of anyone breeding D. jamesoni jamesoni.

-Jamie

congrat!!! very nice job!!!!

Congrat !!!!

congrats man they are stunners..

Congratulations Frank!
Gorgeous little snakes.
Besides D. viridis, those are the nicest mamba's in my opinion!

Good luck raising them.

Cheers,
Harold