cost effective/ non- space consuming methods of housing multiple snakes.

OK, When I get a place of my own I'm planning on keeping quite a few corns for breeding, so I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to keep a large population without over-spending or using too much space. A sort of rack system perhaps?
There are quite a few breeders on these forums so I'm wondering whether anyone has any pics of their set-ups.
What I mean is: I can hardly afford to have a whole three-four foot vivarium with its own heat mat for each individual snake so how would I get around this without abusing the animals.
Thanks.
Neil

DISCOUNT?

hey when u start breeding, can i get like "Cornsnake Forum Discount", seeing as though we both inhabit these boards?

Haha, you wish.

haha, yes, yes i do!

effigy 23 has a picture of one breeders shelf thing lol

it can hold like 40 snakes. it is just like drawers, where you pull each one out and you can see the snakes enclosure. It isn't bad. but it has individual heating, so i bet it will be expensive to set up.

You can make a rack for relatively cheap. I am in the middle of building a rack with heat for 10 adult corns, and it will end up costing me a total of about $125. That's way cheaper than 10 tanks and heat pads! I already use a hatchling rack and it makes checking on them and cleaning up much easier in my opinion. I can't wait to get the big rack finished.

I just build myself a second rack system which holds around 35 adult corn snakes and 6 adult boas and pythons. The total cost for it was around 500 dollars Canadian which is around 300 US or so. This is much cheaper compared to getting tanks. It might be a very high cost if you just look at the price, but then once you divide it by the number of animals it holds, then you'll think that it's not that bad. The price isn't actually that much after all.

So I'd say building your own rack system is the cheapest enclosure that you'll get. I share one heat mat with two enclosures to save money...hahahah

Neil,

What do you mean by "large number"? Is your notion still vague? Or can you give us a ballpark number?

If you are talking about more than a dozen snakes I think you'll want to consider not only the form of your housing system, but at least as importantly, the function of said.

What I mean is this... How functional is the housing for YOU? Trust me, I'm not trying to imply you don't need to be concerned about what your snakes need out of the housing, but if it is time-consuming for you to tend to yout snakes and you are unable to change their water every day (as an example) then the housing is "getting in the way" of you providing top care for the animals. It doesn't matter how fancy a housing system is if the snakes are neglected, of course.

So what I'm getting at is that if you plan on having a large number of snakes, you will want housing that helps you take care of them, not hinder you. You want accessible cages. You want to be able to get the water bowls in/out easilly. You want to be able to clean them easilly. You want to be able to feed your snakes in their house, perhaps?

By all means, get a housing system that takes care of the needs of your snakes, but don't forget that one of their needs is simply your attention so you should try to facilitate your own needs too!

^Curtis

Hi,
If you use the rack system and you have 3-4 maybe 5 containers on each shelf you can buy heat tape and cut it to size.
Jimmy C.

Sorry, I guess i was not finished.
Cut the tape to fit each shelf and you will have heat for all containers on that shelf.( 1 outlet )
Jimmy C. I believe there will be some wireing needed.

I think I'd have somewhere in the region of twenty snakes and then another rack system for the hatchlings.
Neil