Captive breeding of slow worms?

Do you have a garden boocat? if you do then possibly this is where you should start looking - gardens are good sites for slowworms they do like living in urban and suburban settings

My parents have a thriving slowworm population in their garden thanks to my childhood collecting days - I also have some in my garden - it is always best to come to the conclusion that keeping slowworms is better when they are out in the garden rather than indoors

JC

Ah that explains the selling of these animals in the UK - looks like it might be a bit tough maintaining these animals - it would be good for you to go out and record the presence of slowworms in your local area so that they can be conserved - the slowworm is very hard to study being a secretive animal - mine disappear for ages in the summer only to turn up in the unlikely of places - the best advise is not to feed the demand for wild caught reptiles and try and get a captive bred gecko or corn snake - maybe rescue an animal from proteus or somewhere

JC

boocat wrote:  and I havent taken care of a reptile before, just Giant African land snails. But the thing is though is that my mum wont let me have any other reptiles. She says Im allowed a slow and thats it! what do you think I should do then? Any ideas on reptiles like slow worms?

Most of the reptiles that are -like- slow worms are generally speaking even more specialist in feeding and care requirements than slow worms are (Burton's legless lizard is a dedicated lizard-eater that generally can't be switched to mice, sheltopusik get to be nearly five feet in length and are partial to snails.... I'm not familiar with the legless skinks, but they'd still almost certainly require UVB lighting at a minimum).

I would recommend waiting until next year to even consider getting a slow worm (you won't be able to find one wild, imported or captive-bred until next year anyway) - and do a great deal of research in the interim. There's not much out there and available on slow worms in captivity, though the Livefoods forum at www.livefoodshop.co.uk/forum is quite informative - there are a couple of keepers of slow worms on there besides myself, one of whom has had the older of her two for nearly a decade. Spend your time thinking about housing, equipment and care requirements - can you spare the space not only for your slow worm's housing, but for the live food housing as well?

One of the other lessons I've had to learn is to keep my hands off of all but one of my slow worms - Hansel 'asks' to come out (insofar as a reptile can 'ask' - he will approach the glass if you look in, and if you open the door, he will come out onto your hands and settle onto your arm) but the others do not like to be disturbed at all. I weigh them every couple of weeks just to make sure everyone's eating and healthy, but that's it. I don't actually SEE each of my slow worms on a daily basis - I see them once or twice a week, but most of their time is spent beneath the substrate in their vivarium. They're not the most visible of reptile pets!

Honestly, I'd second Mick's suggestion that you start with an 'easier' reptile like a leopard gecko - they're nocturnal, relatively easy to house, and make very rewarding pets indeed (If they didn't, I wouldn't be sitting next to nine of 'em, two of which were homebred!) - and they are a great point at which to start getting used to the care requirements of reptiles, easy to feed on commercially available live foods, easy to tame and handle and not particularly pricey to buy either.

Only caveat is that I wouldn't put a leopard gecko into a 'tank' (Fishtank?) - they don't tame down as well in a top-opening enclosure where you look like a bird of prey swooping down on them to pick them up as they do in a front-opening enclosure where you can approach them sideways and coax onto a hand. Several of mine are tame enough that they can be handed to anyone, even folk who are a little frightened of reptiles, and won't do anything alarming.

Then again, I've got geckos like Kurhah who grouses at me when I pick him up and Chara, who is a vicious little eat-beast (now, that is - she had to be assist-fed in the beginning, and she's making up for lost time) who thinks that those big pink things attached to the feeding tongs MUST be giant waxworms.

Ahhh... I think I was talking about slow worms in the beginning here - it's easy to get me off-track about my babies *grin* Any rate, you won't find any slow worms anywhere until next spring/summer at the earliest, so you've got plenty of time to sort out accomodation, heating, lighting, etc if you're absolutely certain that's what you want.