Spitting Asian Cobras

Spitting Asian Cobras (Naja sp.)

We will describe only how these snakes are kept in captivity, for more details about zoological discriptions and taxonomic notes do we refer to the Asiatic Cobra Systematics Page of Wolfagang Wüster http://sbsweb.bangor.ac.uk/~bss166/Taxa/AsNaja.htm This site provides you of perfect information about descriptions of the Asian Cobra species and also speaks about taxonomy

General:

The following Asian cobra species will be past in this section, on captive experience of the Authors.

· Naja atra – Chinese Cobra

· Naja siamensis – Indochinese Spitting Cobra

· Naja sputatrix – Southern Indonesian Spitting Cobra

· Naja sumatrana – Sumatran Spitting Cobra

Information told about these species will be, feeding, keeping, breeding and captive behaviour.

Naja atra – Chinese Cobra, Naja siamensis – Indochinese Spitting Cobra, Naja sputatrix – Southern Indonesian Spitting Cobra, Naja sumatrana – Sumatran Spitting Cobra.

These tree species of Asian Cobras are quit similar in size and behaviour and will be described together.

The enclosures:

I keep my cobras in enclosures with a size of 120 x 50 x 50 cm (Lenght x wide x height). Al enclosures are made out of chip wood and build as a rack. Every enclosure will open with 6 mm glass windows in a slide rail and can be closed with glass show case lock. Every enclosure is furnished with one silk fern, which is also there hiding place, and a timber log so the snakes can rub there self’s when they need to shed there skin. Lightning and heating is done by a 60 watt spotlight and a heating cable running over the bottom of the enclosure. The cables of the spotlight are hidden in a plastic tube, so the snakes can not rip it apart.

The average temperature in the enclosures is around 25⁰C, but directly under the spotlight will the temperature grow up till about 35⁰C.

I provide every enclosure with a 5 litter water bowl, which is partly placed on the heating cable so the humidity keeps on a certain level between 70 – 90% depending on the time of the day. As substrate do I use a mixture of potting soil, cocobark and peat. This mixtures is a good absorber of fluids and faeces.

Feeding:

In nature do cobras eat a wide variety of prey items like, amphibians, geckos, agamid lizards, snakes, eggs of reptiles and birds, birds and rodents. Juvenile cobras feed mainly on small lizards and amphibians. In captivity do these cobra species also accept a wide range of food items. I feed my cobras mainly on mice and rats, dead and alive, sometimes I will also feed them chicks. Juveniles are fed with life baby mice and when hey are used to this I will feed them dead. When the juveniles are only a few weeks old will some of them not accept baby mice, but force feeding is no option yet. I first try t scent the mice with a frog or lizard, there natural instinct will tell them that this smell is familiar to them and most of the time they stat eating them.

Because most of the Asian cobras are big feeders do we need to watch them so they don’t get to fat like often happens in captivity. Fat sakes can get all kind of problems especially females that need to lay there eggs. So we need to take care for this.

Captive Behaviour:

The tree described species do all have the ability to spit there venom to there attacker. Especially juveniles are quickly irritated and go for almost nothing in defence mode and spit in the direction of there attacker. After the juveniles get older they will calm down. In my own collection do I see that the Naja siamensis is quit a defensive or even aggressive species. My Naja siamensis are irritated easily and don’t stop spitting venom, they also bite with there mouths open. The Naja atra and the Naja sputatrix are snakes that are really calm, I see them rarely act defensive or aggressive and the only time when I see them spreading there hood is when they heat up under the spotlight.

My experience with these tree Asian cobra species is that they are not very interested in any movement outside of there enclosure , most of the time they only look up for a short time when after they get back in there sleeping position. When they finally get active they only try to escape out of there cage. My cobras also love to take a bath and I can say that they spend about 50% of the day in the water bowl.

When I feed my snakes do I mostly do that with dead prey items out of a large tweezers. The Naja siamensis do I feed separate because they act aggressive to each other by spitting venom and biting.

Breeding:

To breed these tree species of cobras is in my opinion not the hardest job to do, I tried different methods and all seem to work quit good.

All cobras of the Naja complex are oviparous and lay 8 – 28 eggs in a clutch. The eggs are laid 60 – 100 days after oviposition. Depending on the incubation temperature will the eggs hatch after 48 – 70 days. The hatchlings molt for the first time after 2 – 11 days. The egg size is aproximaly 40 – 55 mm x 20 – 33 mm groot. Hatchlings are 12 – 20 cm by birth.

To get the adult cobras to mate did I use different methods, all the things that I tried didn’t make a big difference at all. Personally I think that these animals don’t need a hibernation period to make influence on there mating behaviour. Still I use to give them a sort of wet season from October till January. In this fake wet season do I also play with the temperature. Out of experience I found out that when I don’t provide the snakes with this wet period they still mate. The only difference I could see is that there is a bigger change of a second clutch of eggs in the same season when I give them this wet period.

I incubate the eggs in a dry incubator on a temperature of 28 - 32⁰C. The humidity level is around 70 – 80% and can be influenced with spraying the eggs.

Captive Bred 2002 Naja siamensis this species can be very variable in colour but most of them are black and white but brown morphs are not un-common.

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This page is not build to stimulate people to keep venomous snakes. All Captive information given on this page is based on own experience