• Hello!

    Either you have not registered on this site yet, or you are registered but have not logged in. In either case, you will not be able to use the full functionality of this site until you have registered, and then logged in after your registration has been approved.

    Registration is FREE, so please register so you can participate instead of remaining a lurker....

    Please be certain that the location field is correctly filled out when you register. All registrations that appear to be bogus will be rejected. Which means that if your location field does NOT match the actual location of your registration IP address, then your registration will be rejected.

    Sorry about the strictness of this requirement, but it is necessary to block spammers and scammers at the door as much as possible.

newbie...need feeding advice

S

siliconslik

New member
i just bought my first corn snake, he is an albino about 14 inches long. i got him about a week ago and fed him one frozen pinky (which i thawed of course) on saturday and he gulped it down imediately. my corn is very thin and the pinky was about 125% as thick as my snake. i have been reading a lot about feeding on this forum, and i seem to be getting many different opinions about how often to feed young snakes. the pet store was feeding him once a week on saturday adn i was planning on doing the same thing. but now i dont know if i shoudl be feeding him twice a week or maybe two pinkies at one sitting if he'll take them. any input would be greatly appreciated.

i also just wanted to run a couple more things by you more experienced people...

first of all i have him in a 20 gallon long tank. i use a day glo during the day and a red bulb at night but i cant seem to be getting the temperature above 85 degrees on the warm side of the tank (it mostly stays between 82 and 84 and its usually 5-7 degrees cooler on the other side of the tank). the light is sitting directly on the screen, so should i get a higher wattage bulb for the daytime?

also i use repti bark as a substrate and my snake likes to burrow in it, which is why i dont use the hating pad any more. the burrowing concerns me because i havent seen him poo after feeding 5 days ago, so i guess i will just have to go hunting for it.

i guess that is all for now...sorry everyone for the long post... i would really really appreciate any input on any of these issues, thanx everyone!
 
i forgot to mention...my thermometer probe is a few inches away from the bottom of my tank...so the temp might rise at the top directly under the bulb.

also how old might my snake be?
 
You don't want your warm side much warmer than you have it now. You should check the temps at the substrate to make sure that you don't have higher temps than you think. Some people feed their hatchlings every 5 days. I fed mine every 7 but she was about 18" long when I got her. I'm sure you'll be fine every 7 days. If you haven't gotten it already, I would recommend getting the Cornsnake Manual by Kathy Love. It answers a lot of questions and really came in handy for me when I first got my girl. Many pet stores carry it, as well as Kathy's website or on Amazon.com I'm not sure on age. I didn't think anyone had 04's available yet, but I'm guessing that you have one.
 
The feeding schedule is basically up to you. If you prefer weekly, go with it. If you want to feed him/her more often, that's ok too. A lot depends on how fast you want it to grow. At 14" you snake is relatively young. If you do feed it more often, make sure you don't "overload" it and cause it to regurgitate. I feed my youngsters anywhere from 4 days to 8 days. I don't follow a consistent patern. It might be 5 days since they were last fed, and I might not feed again for another 7. It all depends on my schedule and what works for me. If you feed more often, you'll be able to handle your snake less. After feeding, you should give the snake at least 2 days to digest before bothering him again. I have found that toilet paper rolls help to keep my snakes from burrowing. One on the cool side and one on the warm side. Once they find them and get comfortable, I find them in one or the other almost all the time.

As for temps, 82-84 is fine, but I wouldn't hesitate to put the heating pad back (I would get a uth) to give heat from below.

Good luck

Mike
 
Forgot about that. My Aztec burrows as well, so I took a piece of paper towel, doubled it and taped the edges over the area the heat mat is. That way, if she burrows, she won't be able to lay directly on the glass above the heater and get burned. She'll have a layer of paper towel there instead.
 
Since the nutritional value for the snake of pinky mice is not as good as fuzzies, it is not a bad idea to feed new snakes at a little faster rate to get them up to the size for feeding fuzzies. Some people even feed portions of fuzzies to younger hatchlings for nutritional reasons. After they get on fuzzies you can switch to feeding once per week. Most young snakes can be fed twice weekly without regurgitation problems.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top