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how do you dispose of you deceased snakes?

Animal_gal

Animal_gal

guiding blind in darkness
I'm just curious as to how everyone here handles dead snakes.

obviously if it was a dear pet to you, and if you have children, you would probably want to bury it.

however, if you're a snake breeder or just own a lot of snakes, you have to deal with dead snakes a lot and likely wouldn't have the time money or willpower to dedicate to constantly burying snakes.

and if you choose to bury your snake, where do you do so? i can see how having a dead snake in your backyard might take away from your house's resale value.

lol no my snake isn't dead, but his time will indubitably come. and i do plan on breeding corn snakes, hopefully in the near future, and with breeding inevitably comes dead hatchlings, even for the best of us.

sorry if this sounds morbid. i personally think its a good question.
 
It is a good question - one I don't know the answer too - at this point I would personally bury the dead, however also want to be a breeder someday as well. I suppose you could find some way to cremate them ... but I would be very curious as to what some of the bigger breeders say!
 
I've also got a king snake (though I don't know if he'd actually EAT any snakes I offered him) ... but I can't help but wonder how easy it would be to try my hand at tanning the skins so that I could KEEP part of the snake that'd died.
 
I put mine into plastic baggies and then freeze them until trash day. On trash day I just put the frozen critter in with the rest of the garbage that goes out to the curb.
 
Well, a few years ago when my first snake died, I froze it. After a few days I decided it needed a proper burial. So I took it out of the bag and buried it in my back yard. I was 11 so I had to do that. Now I have 2 more in my freezer and may just bury those as well.
 
i think that it is a mark of respect to any animal to bury it, i think to chuck it in the waste bin is a bit harsh on the poor creatures... saying that... i even bury my fish and even any mice that my snake (salsa) doesn't eat... cal me sad... i don't mind
 
It depends on the snake. If it is a hatchling that never survived or would have been unable to survive, it ends up as kingsnake food. I have two confirmed disposals both of which will eat corn snake slugs for me and the smaller, younger one will eat f/t corn hatchlings.

The pets that have died for whatever reason, they get stored in the freezer until we can bury them out back. Just because tossing them out or feeding them to the kings hurts to much because we form attachments to the snakes even if they don't with us.

Thankfully most snakes will live long enough that this isn't something we have to worry about all the time. Though accidents and the unforeseen happen.

Jenn
 
Mrs InsaneOne said:
The pets that have died for whatever reason, they get stored in the freezer until we can bury them out back. Just because tossing them out or feeding them to the kings hurts to much because we form attachments to the snakes even if they don't with us.
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It's different from person to person, and no answer is right or wrong.

I get attached to my pets...heck, even some of my livestock (breeder birds, etc.). I am not, however, attached to their dead bodies. Once they die, they're no longer my pets. The bodies are just empty shells. I keep mementos and photos for memories...the corpses are just lumps of dead tissue.

I personally love the idea of feeding culled hatchlings to other animals. It completes the cycle of life, reduces waste. Too bad I don't have a kingsnake. I do, however, feed my deformed button quail to my corns.

The bottom line is that everyone has a different way of disposing of dead animals. As long as it's within the law (you will probably get a ticket for tossing a dead dog into a lake), do what's convenient for you. If you want to get every animal mounted at a taxidermist, go for it. If you prefer to stockpile in the deep freezer, good for you. If you bury each one in the backyard with its own commemorative nameplate, great. If you feed it to your kingsnake, then kudos to you for recycling. ;)
 
My first corn died of an impaction. I was 14 or 15, and a bit more sentimental than I am now, so I buried him. I've only had one adult die in my care since (last year), and that one was double-bagged in plastic, and went into the dumpster.

I had a hatchling that I bought die earlier in the year, and one I hatched myself die a few days ago (shortly after hatching). When I don't know the cause of death, I don't give them to my kings. These were not "freshly dead" when I found them, so I wouldn't have fed them to a king anyway.

Culled, deformed hatchlings are given as f/t to my kingsnakes.

I haven't decided on a size limit for what I would offer a king. I've never had to cull a snake over 10g. :shrugs:
 
Dean, didn't you have a burial at sea, too?

I wrap anything that dies in my possession in something soft and biodegradable, then bury under a tree, sometimes with a rock on top. This goes for little birds I pick up out of the road that have been hit and just need a peaceful death, too. I once carried a (dead, it turned out) bird in my pocket on my bike for an hour.

Nanci
 
I have buried all the snakes that have died, I have king snakes but wouldnt feed them a snake I loved, wouldnt feel right.
Im very sentimental when it comes to my snakes so feel it only right to give them a proper burial like my parents did for our old cats :(
It is like a mini graveyard at the bottom of our garden, lukily the garden is around 250 yards long hehe
 
Roy Munson said:
Yep. I forgot to mention that the two "unfresh" hatchlings were thrown into the river that runs behind my apartment.
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It would have been evil instead freezing them and then giving them to the local kids telling them that those are pop cycles.
 
tricksterpup said:
It would have been evil instead freezing them and then giving them to the local kids telling them that those are pop cycles.
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:puke01: :puke01: :puke01: Here kids, its a new flavor and shape!
 
Animal_gal said:
i can see how having a dead snake in your backyard might take away from your house's resale value.
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I can't imagine that a couple of buried snakes in the yard would lower a property's value. Home inspectors look for things like buried heating oil tanks--not buried reptiles. This is hardly the sort of thing that one would be compelled to disclose as part of a real estate transaction. I'd be more concerned about the rotting carcass of a big dog or cat. Even a snake's bones would probably not be noticed after a fairly short space of decomposition. This is one of the reasons we know less about the evolution of snakes than other reptiles (as I understand it)--because their bones are so delicate that they tend not to be preserved in the fossil record as well as the bones of, say, a T-Rex.
 
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