Truong Thanh Ngon, 50, in Phung Hiep district, is the first man to raise ran ri voi (Subsessor bocourti) in a glass tank in the Mekong Delta. This is a variety of snake raised by many people in the delta because they are not toxic and have high economic value.

Ngon said he worked as a machine repairman before he began raising snakes, and the income was relatively good. Six years ago, he tried to raise snakes in an empty aquarium. The snakes grew well and reproduced.

“Since then, I have had a passion for raising snakes. As they can bring high economic value, I decided to expand the farming area to 100 glass tanks,” he said.

“As I live in the market, I could not build cement tanks to raise snakes there. I use two empty rooms on the third floor to raise snakes in glass tanks. The two rooms have a total area of 60 sqm,” Ngon said.

Ngon makes the glass tanks and iron shelves himself. Each cabinet has the length of 1.2 meters, width of 0.5 meters, and height of 0.5 meters. There is a valve at the bottom of each tank used for waste water discharge. It costs VND1 million to make each tank.

“I put five snakes on average (3 females and 2 males) into every glass tank. The number of snakes are higher if the snakes are small. It’s easy to breed snakes in glass tanks because you can keep watching over the snakes, observe the snake’s reproduction process, and monitor the quality of water,” he explained.

In glass tanks, he puts plastic ropes and coconut leaves for the snakes to hide under. He also puts in dry banana leaves.

Ngon feeds the snakes and changes the water in glass tanks every 10 days. The major food of the snakes is small sheatfish. One kilogram of sheatfish is priced at VND70,000. The snakes consume 30 kilograms of sheatfish every 10 days.

He sells the snakes for meat or let’s them reproduce after two years of breeding, when each snake weighs 1.2 kilograms.

At present, the snakes have the market price of VND700,000-800,000 per kilogram.

One snake breeder can sell for VND80,000-90,000 per kilogram, and a one-month old snake for VND100,000.

Ngon said he sold 2,000 snake breeders last year and expects to have 2,000 hatchlings this year. 

H. Thanh

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