Cohabbing Misfortunes.

This thread has a single purpose: To collect and keep in one places tales of the consequences of cohabbing.


To start, yes I cohabbed once. One of the snakes ended up on a 6 week hunger strike and had a year of fickle feedings, resulting in real issues growing for a fair while. Feren only started eating again once I separated him from Liam, who was twice his size. He had eaten well for a month before the hunger strike started.

Thanks for starting this thread!

I am glad I found this forum. I don't have any cohabbing stories, because I took the advice I read & chose not to cohab my snakes.

So many horror stories, it's sad.

I don't know who it was, but I remember one person who had two gorgeous babies they picked up from an expo, & thought the babies would be ok together on the way home, but one ate the other one, & they both died, if I remember right.

I think pictures are probably appropriate in this thread, don't you?

Photographic evidence of cohabbing problems:

Moderators, please forgive me. This is in my forum, but I would like to put it here too.

On a Saturday night back in March 2005, I went into the snakeroom to feed the snakes. Back then I only had 3 ball pythons and 8 cornsnakes. I thawed the mice and went to feed one of the ball pythons. My normally placid ball python was hissing and wildly striking at me the moment I opened the drawer. I jumped back and noticed a scorched smell and saw that the substrate was charred. I pulled the drawer all the way out of the rack, while dodging the strikes of the snake, put on my "wussy gloves" and transferred the snake into the large "critter keeper" that I used on cage-cleaning day.
The bottom of the drawer was actually melted. There was a fist-sized hole where the plastic was gone. I was horrified. I quickly unplugged the rack and waited for the snake to settle down. Thankfully, the snake was unhurt.

I ended up having to co-hab 2 of my ball pythons and 2 of my corns until the new rack came. Not a great situation as I had never been a fan of cohabbing in the first place. Snakes don't choose to socialize or travel in herds in the wild, but this was only going to be temporary. I put my 2 male ball pythons, and 2 of my male cornsnakes together. One of the cornsnakes was named Kelsey. He was a 7 year old amel stripe and one of the most beautiful snakes I had ever laid eyes on. I got him from a breeder that never learned how to pop or probe hatchlings, but said he could tell a snakes sex by its tail shape. I had put Kelsey in with females in the past, but he never showed any interest. I thought it was just bad timing on my part......

The new rack came about 2 weeks later. I settled everyone into their new digs, and thought things were fine. I was wrong. A few weeks later I noticed that Kelsey was starting to look "chunky". It NEVER EVER occured to me that "he" might be gravid. For 7 years I had thought of Kelsey as a male. I never provided a lay box. Why would you provide a lay box for a male snake?
One night in July I went to feed Kelsey and found "him" surrounded by 13 or 14 eggs. It took a few minutes for it to sink in that my boy was actually a girl. Initially, I was thrilled. I had wanted to breed that gorgeous snake from the beginning. I fed Kelsey a fuzzy and set the eggs up in vermiculite.

A couple of weeks went by, and Kelsey "seemed" to recover. She was eating and acting normally. I had not handled her since she laid her eggs. I took her out of the cage and noticed a huge lump near her cloaca, with several more behind it. My heart sank. I made a vet appointment the next day. The vet managed to get one egg out of her and gave her an injection designed to cause muscle contractions, in hopes of helping her expel the rest of the eggs. After a week of no progress I brought her back to the vet. She was given another injection. The next morning, Kelsey was dead.

It was very hard losing Kelsey that way. It was my fault for co-habbing and not seeing the signs of a gravid snake. But, I still had the eggs. That was something. I decided that it would be hard to give up ANY of Kelsey's babies, come hatch time. Even if they were a bunch of normals, I could breed them together and hopefully someday hatch a baby as beautiful as that girl was.....
But one by one I watched the eggs die. Soon I had only 9 good ones....then 8...And by October I was down to only 3 good eggs.

On October 12 a head poked out of one egg. I was elated. The baby had the same wonderful striped pattern as its mother!! On October 13, another head appeared, and again the same striped pattern emerged. The color was a bit darker on both those babies but that wonderful pattern was the same! (That meant the male was het for stripe too!) Then on October 14, the last baby hatched, the spitting image of Kelsey! They turned out to be all males, and they came at a horrible price. But I named them Kessler, Kato and Kismet and kept all 3. My avatar is a picture of Kato as a hatchling.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I will have to say that I am adamantly against co-habbing snakes. It cost one of mine her life. If my words seem strong in those kinds of threads, it just because I don't want someone else to go through what I did. The snakes are the ones who suffer for our poor decisions. Always remember that.
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I will share my experience with cohabbing. I have had snakes off and on most of my life. Had been out of it for awhile and decided I wanted corn snakes. Bought a male Anery and female Normal motley from a "breeder". They were both 5 months old. The were kept together since birth. The male was huge in comparison to the female and I was told they would be fine together. Even asked advice from my local pet shop that had a snake "expert" working there. The "expert" said they would be fine in the same viv. My snakes were always together also, they ate well, shed etc. for about 2 months. The female just wasn't growing. I found her dead in the viv one morning and she looked like she had been regurged or mashed. Either way she was dead, and I wish I could go back and change the way I first did things. I can't but I sure learned a lesson. Never will I cohab snakes again, no matter what age!!! My Anery, will be a year old in Sept., now weighs 93 grams and is gorgeous, I miss my little Motley, still feel horrible about her demise, I could have avoided it.
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Kay
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0.1 Adult CommonMiami Phase Corn Snake,
1.0 2010 Mystery/Anery

Here is my contribution... I don't have any horror stories. But, I have an album full of misfortune pictures that I found in Google Images... http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/album.php?albumid=1217

Here is a link to my thread. Granted it is not a "cohabbing" story but they were cohabbed for about an hour. And at this time we are hoping that it is a happy ending but as starsevol's story proves it is not always a happy ending. My biggest point is that these are babies. So even if the babies are happy and eating (and not each other) there is always a chance of premature breeding as well.


http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113024

So far, this thread seems to suggest that co-habbing is only a bad thing to do when either of the snakes is too young to be bred. In that case, if they are old enough, it is not more dangerous than putting them together because you want them to breed. If you notice an unexpected gravity in time of course....

I must say I do feel a little 'itchy' from this thread; maybe I should start a thread on co-habbing for years without problems and one for cases were snakes were not co-habbed and still got sick or died? Recently I read somewhere that research showed that the stimulation of another snake nearby is actually beneficial.

I also don't understand why I see all those piles of hatchlings on this forum, while most cases of cannibalism occur between HATCHLINGS. I know that some will even keep them together as a group until their first shed. Yet these breeders are most probably against co-habbing..... weird choice IMO.

Sorry for the off topic contribution but I don't have any co-habbing misfortune stories to tell, even though I have been co-habbing for years (now wait for the scorching)

I do have to say and I put it in a thread somewhere. I do have a cohabbed pair. :duck: I know that they are both female cause they have both layed eggs and they are in a 100 gal tank. Plus, I have a couple more divided tanks but more often then not most the people that are asking are new. And I have a big probably telling someone that it is ok the cohab knowing that there is a risk when I know that if they don't cohab there isn't that same risk. Most of these problems come from people who don't know their snake inside or out, like we do. My biggest reason for bringing up the age thing is because I have seen many times at pet stores where people are told that they can cohab until 2 because the can not become gravid before that and we all know that just isn't the truth.

Blutengal... just had to stir the pot? I think the point of this thread is simple: A place where we can collect stories, pictures, and information about cohabbing. There shouldn't be any debate here, there's been debate in a lot of other places.

I have never had problems with cohabbing. Why? Because I've NEVER done it and I never will. This was my first year producing hatchlings. I didn't get any baby pile pictures because I removed the babies as soon as I found they were completely out of the egg.

I have seen cohabbing though. I went to a breeder's house (nobody here) and he had about 5-8 yearlings in a shoebox size container together. Not just one tub like that, but several. How is that good for any snake? The only reason he kept them that way was so he could keep more snakes in a smaller space and make a bigger profit from selling them. :nope:

Yeah sorry for that, sometimes you feel like that Please continue as if I did not write that please

I was told by the breeder I originally got my corn from that my roommate and I could keep our two males together until they were two. I know I saw someone else's post in another section where their yearling was accidentally cohabbed and she laid eggs. I have to say, my year old corns are hardly the thickness of my pinkie finger, and I have some TINY hands (I feed them two fuzzies a week, so they're definitely eating right)! My roommate and I kept our two hatchlings in a 20 gallon long with tons of paper towel rolls, single serve cereal boxes, store bought hides, and even a pillowcase. I know snakes do not get attached to each other, but I think since they were babies they found each other's company to be comforting, because even though they were offered so many hides, they were ALWAYS in the same one together. Even if it was in the inside corner of the pillowcase. At the end of the school year we went our separate ways and the snakes were no worse for the wear. I don't keep any of my current pet snakes together though, even my two-year olds are in different tubs. BUT the hatchlings I have are together. I have three in one tub and two in the other. I would buy separate tubs for all of them, but since I don't have a room kept at 85 degrees that means most of them would be without heat. Thus being said, I know that there is always the risk of cannibalism and once these babies are gone the only time my two corns are going to see each other is in breeding season! I also do warn people who buy the babies from me about the potential for them to eat each other and other issues that may arise from cohabbing. I know this thread was probably started for negative stories, but my story is a story nonetheless.

I don't really think we are stirring the pot here. I just had to agree to a point and justify why I am saying "do as I say not as I do." I do think that the idea of this thread is a great one because when the question gets asked the next time, we can just give them a link and the thread is dead. Any even if there is a little discussion among us I think that is better and more constructive than if it is with someone who feels attacked. I also don't think it is bad for someone to put in here that they cohab either. Even if it is as simple as, "I agree with all of these point but I do cohab." We all know that there is going to be someone that see all of these bad points and still want to cohab but maybe seeing the ones that do. They will come to those and ask how they do it and avoid all of the negatives that can happen from keeping snakes together. :shrugs:

Cohabiting your snakes is a proceed at your own risk kind of deal. Just like we can't tell people how to raise their kids, we can't tell people how to keep their snakes. We can only suggest what we think is best and let the owner decide what they think is best for their critters.

I can also say that in the wild it's not like snakes are alone all the time (breeding season aside) if there was a nice pile of rocks, rubbish or other perfect hiding place for a snake I would imagine we would find many snakes hiding in it without issues. Just trying to look at the bigger picture here...

I loved your post and I agree completely with the first half. I do understand the second and feel I must add... Wild snakes may meet up as you say, in fact they likely do, however the main difference to note is that they can "escape" the other snake's presence whereas in a vivarium or tub they have a limited space and are unable to seek solitude should that be their desire.

At work we cohab all of the corn snakes together, and the small ball pythons and BCIs (boa constrictors) together. The majority of the time things go great... but when they go wrong, they go seriously wrong. And that's the bottom line about cohabbing, in my opinion.

Recently a little anery who has eaten well and showed no signs of illness regurged. Or I THINK it regurged. See, since there is more than one snake per cage I have no real clue who did it. So I have to guess, and hope it doesn't die.

This happened with a boa while it was in with the BPs, too. But by the time I found out it was already extremely sick and passed away.

We have a large Bp with an RI infection, someone throws a perfectly healthy BP in with it and BAM. Two snakes with RIs. See what I mean? There is not ONE SINGLE BENEFIT for the snakes. Period. But here ARE a lot of risks to their health.

Anyone who cohabs just hasn't been doing it long enough for there to be a problem. As soon as they experience one, which they most likely will, they usually (hopefully) decide against it.

K. Rene said:

Cohabiting your snakes is a proceed at your own risk kind of deal. Just like we can't tell people how to raise their kids, we can't tell people how to keep their snakes. We can only suggest what we think is best and let the owner decide what they think is best for their critters.

I can also say that in the wild it's not like snakes are alone all the time (breeding season aside) if there was a nice pile of rocks, rubbish or other perfect hiding place for a snake I would imagine we would find many snakes hiding in it without issues. Just trying to look at the bigger picture here...

Click to expand...

That happens as a fact. So, maybe they don't feel like hanging out if they have the space of the outside, that does not necessarily mean that they hate to be close to each other when they get what they are looking for. I have a very large viv for 3 male yearlings with many hides and a large warm spot covering a couple of hides at a time. Yet they lay together all the time, like they did when they were in a smaller viv too. I feel pretty sure that they don't have the exact same idea about what hiding place they need to be in at every hour of the day all the time. I think they like the tight feeling of being in one coconut with the three of them. Over here on a Dutch forum those 'tied up' strings of corn snake in a coconut are considered quite normal, yesterday I saw one with four corns inside...

Of course, separating them and putting each of them in bath room size vivs with plants and climbing material would be perfect... duh

Hmmm.... Thread: "Post your aneries"... replies: "Here's my amel!"

If I posted a thread about "Great benefits of cohabbing" would I get what I asked for in *this* thread, I wonder?

Shiari said:

Hmmm.... Thread: "Post your aneries"... replies: "Here's my amel!"

If I posted a thread about "Great benefits of cohabbing" would I get what I asked for in *this* thread, I wonder?

Click to expand...

Public forum. You've been around long enough to know you get what you get with cohabbing threads.

Someone in the thread hit the nail on the head... you can't tell people how to raise their kids (within reason) and the same applies for snakes. It's good to have photos of what COULD happen, but the fact is that it's rare and there ARE people of all sorts who will still take the risk.

Bluetengel is pointing out that in Europe it is considered perfectly acceptable to cohab. What is not being pointed out is that in Europe, their laws usually require MUCH larger vivs than ours even for one snake. As he said... 3 yearlings in a 100 gallon tank... that is a 6' x 18" tank. They CAN get away from each other if they choose.... there's a big difference between that and cramming 8 yearlings in a damn shoebox.

I'm a she

6' x 18" wow... that I don't even use for my triple yearlings cage. That's 6 foot long right?