I almost posted this in the Questions thread, then remembered the rules.

I always thought that there was more to breeding basilisks than just giving a chicken egg to a toad. If it was that simple, wouldn't Voldemort breed himself a battalion of basilisks and just steamroll everything? Or even use them as super beefy cannon fodder? Breeding basilisks was outlawed in the Middle Ages. Isn't it possible that perhaps some spells or a potion is required to truly transform the chicken egg?

I could totally see the Gaunts, crazy as they were, keeping a pet basilisk around to further stroke their egos and affirm their Slytherinness. After all, Gaunts knew about the basilisk in the Chamber - IIRC, Corvinus (?) Gaunt fixed the entrance in the 1800s after the plumbing was installed.

Also, Hagrid. He's been through acromantulas, giant three-headed dogs and dragons.

"I've got a dozen roosters just in case - what could possibly go wrong?"

Sure, Hagrid might not know about the roosters and basilisks, but if the latter were more common, I think that knowledge would be as well. And it's not like there would be no market for basilisks. I'm sure that venom would go far a pretty galleon (recall Slughorn mentioning the price of acromantula venom, and there are dozens of those things in the Forbidden Forest).

Finally, wizards work with dragons, who are rather deadly and hunt nundus, who are among the most dangerous magical beasts out there. You could just blind the basilisk and still milk it for the venom.

So, again - is basilisk breeding really as simple as canon suggests?

 

I don't see why not.

They're so dangerous that no sane wizard is going to breed them. There's no evidence that even parselmouths can control them -- the Chamber of Secrets basilisk could only be controlled by Slytherin's heir, not just any parselmouth. It's unclear what Salazar Slytherin did to make that particular basilisk obedient to his bloodline, but there's no evidence that it's the norm.

The few insane wizards who do breed them will most likely die very quickly and so there's probably a few wild basilisks around. But I imagine that the moment they appear on the radar of magical authorities they're executed pretty sharpish, so likely none of them live long enough to reach the size of basilisk we saw in CoS.

 

I posted something about this in the Small Questions thread. It seems off to me as well. I think it's one of those things that you have to kind of mentally tweak.

My headcanon is that basilisks lay eggs themselves, but they need to be hatched under a toad. That means they can't reproduce without wizards, but wizards can't breed basilisks with just a chicken egg and a toad - they need an actual basilisk egg. Thus, their rarity.

You could also tweak it a little and say that yes, it's a chicken egg hatched under a toad, but there's also this extremely Dark ritual you need to jump-start the whole thing, and the ritual itself is proscribed, lost, hard to perform, whatever.

The third option (can be meshed into either of the first two) is to surmise that the info in the books and in Fantastic Beasts is misinformation, because publishing "how to make a basilisk" information is pretty irresponsible.

 

A battalion of basilisks could be defeated by a single rooster. And basilisks might be useless until they're a few decades old for all we know.

e; The described process seems really odd, though. Really hands-off - potion-making is far more involved, especially for powerful stuff, and that's the closest analogue I can think of.

 

I always assumed it involved some sort of dark ritual to fertilize the egg, otherwise every mentally unstable wannabe dark wizard would try to make one.

 

@Taure: "sane wizards" are the key words here, I think. And like I said, if you blind a basilisk, I believe it wouldn't be so hard to keep it, if you're careful.

I'm also wondering about the growth rate. The only confirmed case of a giant basilisk is the one in CoS. According to canon, it's known that they can grow that big, but the canon one was a 1000 years old. How would wizards know how big a basilisk can grow? Was a specimen watched for a few centuries? Did they calculate the growth rate from a shorter period of time?

My headcanon is that they grow big really fast, provided they have enough food, after which the growth slows down so much that it's almost imperceptible and they only shed skin once in a long while. It would strengthen their fearsome reputation and it could be a reason for wizards not breeding them. Much harder to control a giant snake than a small one.

As for controlling one with Parseltongue, my headcanon is that enchantments on the Chamber make it controllable. If it got outside Hogwarts, it couldn't be controlled in this way anymore. After all, it's a Chamber of Secrets. Basilisk is just one, there's probably more to it than what we saw in the book for a short period of time.

@Newcomb: since there are male and female basilisks, I think it's possible for them to actually breed and lay regular basilisk eggs, but I imagine them to be lone creatures who'd rarely mate and maybe even then the pregnancy could be very long and yield few eggs. I stand by my belief of a missing ingredient, not mentioned in canon, required in the chicken-toad process.

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Good points. Scratch my basilisk battalion plan.

 

If Basilisks were so easy to hatch, then wouldn't there be a lot of basilisk poison around? Hatch one, blind it right away, raise it until you can milk it or kill it for the fangs.

 

What does the average person want with Basilisk venom? Logisitcally speaking I can't think of many reasons why someone would want to raise a basilisk, let alone devoting resources and time to doing so, precautionary maiming of a presumably sentient or near-sentient creature aside.

The average magical citizen isn't running around trying to subjugate the magical world or create exotic rare potions or poison their enemies after all, that's Harry's job.

 

But there could very well be someone who'd like a renewable source of basilisk venom. And I imagine that a heartstring from such a badass beast would make a hell of wand core.

Or basilisk bone picture frames to sell to people like Malfoys.

 

That is a random and wonderful image.

 

One would assume that breeding of Bassalisks (whether or not it is as easy to do so as described) would be heavily regulated, if not out-and-out illegal.

 

Assuming that someone who tried it would apply for permission from the Ministry. Cause, you know, not like people do illegal shit or anything. Like raising dragons in their homes.

 

Yeah, I have a hunch that the Venn diagram for "People who want to breed a basilisk" and "People who give a shit what the Ministry thinks" has a pretty small overlap.

 

Well, yeah. But that hinders things - like basilisk venom - sale-ability, especially from the vantage point we see in canon.

 

Which means it'll be even more valuable. See: Real life drugs.

 

Well, it's probably easy enough, I guess, but you do realize that you need to keep a toad still enough for actually doing it, right? There's also no mention of any incubation period, so I'm guessing it'll take some time, and you try keeping a toad still for that long. The procedure is simple enough, but actually doing it might require you to take a hiatus from everything else you're doing for quite some time.

 

*Petrificus Totalus!*

 

FTFY.

Easy enough solutions are abundant. There many no cultural desire for basilisk parts, or they may not be useful in anything, etc.

 

I do think that there will be a demand for a poison strong enough to kill anyone and anything not able to get help from a phoenix, and able to destroy even horcruxes. Especially since you can use to to create poison weapons (like with the Sword of Gryffindor).

 

Do remember that the toad is incubating an egg. Petrificus Totalus binds your limbs together and makes you stiff as a board. That's not incubation position.