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Caging snakes together

C

crunkmasterflex

New member
okaye i have been reading all over the inernet that it is not a good idea to house snakes together. But i know there has to be some people out there that have had no problem at all with letting snakes live with eachother in the same tank. I have two cornsnakes female and male and they have been living together for all there lives (about 6 months) because they were bought from a breeder who kept at least 6-8 snakes in teh same cage. They seemed fine all together, the cage was probably about 5ftx1ftx1ft. SO is this just a precaution because i don't understand why they can't live with eachother. I mean the parents to my snakes had to of gotten along in order to mate right. Any thoughts on this would be helpful
--thanks
 
A couple of reasons for caging snakes seperately are:

1) Snakes are solitary animals and caging them together puts them in stress. There is an exception if you are breeding the snakes.

2) When eating, the snakes must be fed in seperate cages because they could fight for food and they could end up hurting or killing each other.

I know there are more but these are the ones I could remember now.
 
Actually when I found this forum, I was searching the exact same thing. I wanted to add another snake in with my current one.

There's the risk ot the snakes mating when you don't want them to (if they are male & female), and if the female is too young......it's bad for her.

Disease transfer, but they were together for a while, so prolly not in this case.

And the scariest one: canibalism. Sometimes corn snakes (they said especially younger ones) eat eachother. And if one eats the other, assuming they are of the same size.....both will probably die because you can't really eat something that's the same size as you.
 
yeah i know not to feed them together because of that whole fight for the food thing but im not too worried about them eating eachother because htey won't do that unless they are starving right unless they are like gold fish's who dont' know when to stop eating. But another thing i went to this reptile specialist store and i was talkin to the guy there who run's the place and he said that he hastn' really encountered a problem but it was more common wiht just one type of sex like males living with males or vice versa. And all the snakes he was selling were caged wiht another snake so I dunno I think im just gonna stick wiht them living together see what happens cause frankly I think the only potential downfall or risk is them mating to early.
--thanks
 
some snakes "feeding response" will vary and just because you feed them in separate locale's doesn't mean that once you reintroduce them after a feeding it's all good. There is an increased likelihood that one or the other will still be in that "zone" where they literally are in a feeding frenzy and snap at anything that moves.

I used to wall off my first pair I had living together during feeding time with their housing log. One day I was in a hurry and fed them and quickly replaced the log and sure enough, the male snapped and started wrapping the female. Luckily this happened before I had time to put the top of the cage, I screamed, panicked, grabed them and separated them in time.

Lesson learned the hard way. We only suggest what we do to help others avoid the pitfalls we've experienced ourselves.

Good luck with that though, you sound like you're going to give it a go anyway.


EDIT: and yes, for every story like mine there are 50,000 people around that will chime in and say they've never had a single problem. Sincerely, I hope you never experince what I did, it's not pleasent.

P.S. http://www.cornsnakes.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10410
 
As I mentioned in another post...one of the main concerns is breeding too early. A female should not be bred until she is about 3 foot and 300 grams. If you breed her before then (and believe me...they will breed before then), you are going to be taking a BIG risk that could be fatal to your female. If you care about your snakes, then it's best for them to be separated.

You know, even when they are big enough to breed, they shouldn't be kept together except for breeding. If they are left together, it is VERY stressful on both the male and female. The female wants to be left alone and the male doesn't want to leave her alone. They will exhaust themselves, which can suppress their immune systems and make them more likely to get sick.

As Homer said, it sounds as if you don't really want our opinions. It sounds as if you have your mind made up...unfortunately, you may be choosing the hard road. I hope you don't regret it...
 
my opinion

I have usually found that when someone asks that question they have already made up their mind and just want someone to confirm their choice.

There are many beliefs, ideas and opinions on the subject so why not voice my own.
It is not truly worth the risk. Yes, there are a lot of people who keep multiple corns together with success, BUT,
there are things to consider.
If one of the snakes regurgitates its food or has a runny stool there is no way to tell which one has the problem.
If one gets sick it is a pretty high likelihood that the other will also.
Some corns are stressed by the presence of other snakes. You might have one or both of the snakes have eating problems and possibly other problems due to stress.
There is always a chance of cannibalism. Even if you separate the snakes when feeding there is the possibility that the lingering smell of mouse could trigger a feeding response in one of the snakes. On feeding day you have two and the next day you look into the container to see only one and that one is extremely full. There is also a good chance that this hatchling could die if it can't digest a meal of that size. Cannibalism isn't common but it has happened. It is a possibility.
If you keep a male and female together you could be asking for trouble. There is always the chance they will breed before the female is actually old enough or large enough to carry the eggs successfully. She could become eggbound and even die. Also fairly uncommon but it too has happened.
So, you say well I'll keep two males or two females together. Most people who acquire hatchlings do not know their sex. It is easy for even experienced breeders to miss sex very young snakes. Some people won't find out the sex of their snakes until later on but will rationalize "well, they've been together this ling, it shouldn't be a problem." but it Can be a problem.
I have kept snakes together without problems but have made a choice to keep them separate.
There is no real clear argument on why you should keep them together but there are clear arguments as to why you should not.
So, in my opinion, although people do it successfully I just don't think it is worth the risk.
 
okaye thanks for the comments i really appreciate them its just really hard to belive things when everythign is different but i guess i hear more of keeping the snakes separated than keeping them together so i guess i'll seperate them but usually around what age or lenght do they begin to mate. Becase I dont' really have teh resources to go out and buy a whole nother set up so should i worry bout them mating now or do i have a few months...weeks...? BUt this wouldn't effect the snakes though because they seem to be doing fine i mean they never fight they just stay coiled up during the day underneath they're hideout until night when they start to move around. They are really calm snakes accept for my female she keeps striking at me whenever i stick my fingers around her, guess she's just hungry. I have a question say if you feed a snake something bigger than it can handle but it still manages to swallow it is there still any risks involving digesting right. Because today i fed my snakes and i want to get them onto fuzzies and i fed my snake a kinda big fuzzy( the lady at the pet store said it was okaye) but i dunno her body was really oblong. It was normal size around her neck then as you go down it gets to be at least twice her normal size then towards the tail it goes back to the same size. I guess im just making sure i won't check up on my snakes one day and see a dead snake. O yeah and how long do you think a pinky will stay alive without any source of water or food?
 
Just one more word on the subject. I know that right now, there is at least one post under I think, health, that has the subject "Dead Corn". The story there is the perfect reason not to keep two in the same viv. There was also someone else who recently posted about how his female is stunted in growth due to the fact that she bred early to the male she was housed with. I'd advise you to seperate the two before they do mate, which could be anytime.....
 
To answer you question about food size...

You run the risk of a regurgitation if the food item is too large. If your snake keeps it down this time, then wait a week before feeding her again. If she regurgitates, then wait 10 days before feeding her again, and keep her on smaller meals for a while longer.

A pink will stay alive for 2-4 days without any milk. It is cruel, though, to let it starve to death.

And you should separate your snakes as soon as possible. How big are they, by the way?
 
my snakes are about a foot and some odd inches liek 1'3" and how do you feed pinkies you just give them regular milk liek the milk us humans drink (1%..2%..etc.) or do you have to buy special milk for them. Is there any way the pinkies can catch a disease while being kept alive because i rather keep this pinky alive until the next feeding day (next weekend) because my snakes rather eat live ones and not dead ones.
 
You wouldn't be able to feed the milk we drink to a pinky. You could probably use puppy or kitten replacer milk. You would only feed them a few drops at a time using an eye dropper. I'm not sure how often you'd have to feed them. I would guess every 2-3 hours. You also have to make sure to keep the pinky warm, and to stimulate it to urinate and defecate. It would probably be cheaper and easier to simply buy a new pinky. s
 
oo okaye would it be okaye if i just fed my snake the pinky right now its really really tinny and i fed it one yesterday of similar size and i know my snake can handle two at a time but this is different so shoudl i do it?
 
It's really up to you. I think a 6 month old snake could probably handle an extra pinky if it wants it.
 
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