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Probably a rain chamber would work fine
I heard a report from a frog guy who built an air-pressure-chamber to simulate wheatherchanges with rising and reducing the air pressure instead of heavy "rainfall", which worked really good for some Phylomedusa and other species... So maybe that's another thing snake-people could try
It's so hard to tell why some snakes mate... Maybe some people are just lucky putting sensible snakes together and they lock up, others are trying and trying with a lazy couple and nothing goes on...
Same with cannibalism, I've seen snakes living together for many years and one day there's just one fat snake left... So maybe there are just tiny triggers for some behaviors...
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They kind of freak me out a little, in terms of "unplanned births"
All enclosures are built that no newborn snake would be able to escape. So sometimes the visitors are lucky and can watch a rattlesnake giving birth. In most (almost all) cases these babies are expected, as the owner checks his animales on a daily base. So if the mother is done we remove the adults and then step for step the decoration, with thick (juvenile-bite-proof) gloves of course!!!
Normaly we take the chance for a big cleaning as well...
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About the hygiene - its been interesting to note in my experiences with these types of environments that the animals defecate in certain locations with a pattern.
I can't second that, but I'm interessted in the species you observed this?
I experienced this as a very individual thing...
There are snakes that only poop into their waterbowl (most prefer the fresh cleaned waterbowl as many of you probaply know^^), others just if they are on their way, but never on their basking spot...
And then there are lot's of dirty bastards, pooping while crawling over the other inmates, lying in their feces and especially african spitters spread their feces around in their enclosure, all over the rocks, the moss, on the outside of their waterbowl up to the last gap between the rocks and the backwall and even on the frontglass!
Normal practise at the zoo is a daily morning check, looking for new impurities in the enclosures, empty waterbowls and if the snakes are looking good of coures...
Things are kept clean but not sterile, and as we are using decoartions from nature we find some bugs and sometimes a few ants in the enclosures, but never had any problems with them... (problems come from bad feedingrats and stuff like this...)
So there is a "quick cleaning", well never just quick with hots, but just a little bit to do, nothing to change with the decoration and most of the snakes can stay in their enclosures.
Another great advantage with this natural setups the snakes can cover and feel safe and you have some barriers in their strikingrange (which you should respect nevertheless).
So we use a vaccuum cleaner with a long pipe to get out the small dirt, feces and old skin, water/exchange the plants, clean and refill the waterbowl...
And then there is the big cleaning, the frequency depends on the number of animals and their digestion (cobras more often than a gabun for example).
That means we remove the animals, get out all of the decoration, put the rocks an branches in the bathtub and scrub it all over... Renew the substrate and the pieces of grass and moss and put the setup back together.
When ever we disturbe the animals we try to put as many reasons together as possible, so often we combinate cleaning with venom extraction and/or feeding.
one of my favorite enclosures for the big cleaning... hard work to get all the stuff clean, but rebuilding it afterwards is such a great fun

Macrovipera schweizeri enclosure by
Markus Oulehla, auf Flickr
the outside enclosures are easier, but hell if you can't grab the pregnant female and have to dig up the hibernaculum
Natrix tessellata in outdoor enclosure by
Markus Oulehla, auf Flickr
and the most important thing with natural setups, find the animals before you open the enclosure, or they'll find you
Bitis arietans hiding by
Markus Oulehla, auf Flickr