dasluder62
First Time Corn Owner
We moved from Florida to California about a month ago. Joey seemed to handle the move fairly well. He is eating and defecating well, but there have been some significant changes in his behavior and I'm worried. We lived on the West Coast of Florida - sea level and now we're north of LA in the mountains at 5000 ft.
First concern is that it is extremely dry here - it's considered "high desert". The humidity in the house is below 20%. We humans are having all sorts of problems with the dry air. For Joey, I am using wet towels on top of the cage to keep the humidity up - it fluctuates between 30% - 60%.
Secondly, we had some problems regulating the temperature. The UTH wasn't warming the tank enough, so we added an over the tank lamp and now it seems better. His hide stays between 80-85. The middle area of the tank is between 78-82 and the cool side stays around 75-78. We have 3 digital thermometers - one on the tile under his main hide where the UTH is; one suspended on a "tree" in the middle of the tank and one on the cool side of the tank. The UTH is attached to a thermostat. In order to maintain the middle area temp, the lamp has to stay on 24/7.
Changes:
Joey looked like he was getting ready to shed when we first got here - but he never did. He has a loose scale on the top of his head and there are rough patches along his body - but no loose skin. Can stress and change of environment cause a shed to "arrest"?
Joey used to wander around his cage daily - he would come out of his hide and just roam around for a bit - burrow in his substrate, climb on his vines, drink some water and then go back into the hide. Most of the time, he would just sit with his head sticking out of the hide watching us.
Since we moved, he never comes out. He comes out during the night to poop - we found poop when we cleaned the cage, otherwise we would never have known that he comes out at all.
He went "blue" a few days ago, and I'm hoping and praying that he has a healthy shed. I've "soaked" him a couple of times by wrapping him in a towel and putting him a shallow pan with warm water (~ 80 deg). Both times he drank a lot of water and then lay quietly in the pan until I took him out.
Any suggestions on how we can help him to acclimate to his new environment are welcome. The most important thing is that we want our baby to stay healthy, but we also really miss seeing him up and around.
One last thing - his last shed measured a little over 5 ft. Will the frequency of shedding slow down now? Joey is our first snake. He's a Corn.
First concern is that it is extremely dry here - it's considered "high desert". The humidity in the house is below 20%. We humans are having all sorts of problems with the dry air. For Joey, I am using wet towels on top of the cage to keep the humidity up - it fluctuates between 30% - 60%.
Secondly, we had some problems regulating the temperature. The UTH wasn't warming the tank enough, so we added an over the tank lamp and now it seems better. His hide stays between 80-85. The middle area of the tank is between 78-82 and the cool side stays around 75-78. We have 3 digital thermometers - one on the tile under his main hide where the UTH is; one suspended on a "tree" in the middle of the tank and one on the cool side of the tank. The UTH is attached to a thermostat. In order to maintain the middle area temp, the lamp has to stay on 24/7.
Changes:
Joey looked like he was getting ready to shed when we first got here - but he never did. He has a loose scale on the top of his head and there are rough patches along his body - but no loose skin. Can stress and change of environment cause a shed to "arrest"?
Joey used to wander around his cage daily - he would come out of his hide and just roam around for a bit - burrow in his substrate, climb on his vines, drink some water and then go back into the hide. Most of the time, he would just sit with his head sticking out of the hide watching us.
Since we moved, he never comes out. He comes out during the night to poop - we found poop when we cleaned the cage, otherwise we would never have known that he comes out at all.
He went "blue" a few days ago, and I'm hoping and praying that he has a healthy shed. I've "soaked" him a couple of times by wrapping him in a towel and putting him a shallow pan with warm water (~ 80 deg). Both times he drank a lot of water and then lay quietly in the pan until I took him out.
Any suggestions on how we can help him to acclimate to his new environment are welcome. The most important thing is that we want our baby to stay healthy, but we also really miss seeing him up and around.
One last thing - his last shed measured a little over 5 ft. Will the frequency of shedding slow down now? Joey is our first snake. He's a Corn.
