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Question for the experts

M

Merlin0511

New member
My friend is buying 2 baby corn snakes and he is planning on houseing them together, and i told him it would be better to not house them together, but he said that he is going to anyways because he wants to bread them later but he dont have enough money right now to buy two of everything...so is there any tips you guys can give me to give to him about houseing to snakes together?
 
how big of an enclouser is he keeping them in?
i keep two hatchlings together in a 50 gal so they pretty much never see each other
 
Your friend needs to do some serious thinking.

If he cannot afford two enclosures how will he afford to breed them? lol....it costs TONS of money put into a pair of snakes to produce a clutch. And then more money to buy the supplies needed for the eggs and hatchlings. He is irresponsible if he is going to breed when he cannot even afford 5-10 bucks for a rubbermaid.

His excuse of "I want to breed them" has no bearing on keeping them together. When you keep two snakes together you are inviting problems in where they were normally be none.

1. Early breeding. Females can DIE from this. They need to be kept seperate until they are of breeding age. Which is normally two-three years.

2. Disease transmission. If one is sick you can't tell who if its bad crap, and if one is sick with something transmittable you now have TWO snakes to take to the vet, although if your friend can't afford a measly 5-10 bucks for another enclosures I don't see how he can afford to take two snakes for fecals, and vet visits if one does indeed get sick.

3. Stress. snakes are SOLITARY CREATURES. They do NOT make friends, they don't miss other snakes, and they live alone almost 100% of the time in the wild. They can be stressed out (and you might not even be able to tell) by being forced to share a cage. You need DOUBLE the space as normal and four hiding spots at minimum.

I would tell your friend to stop being cheap, or don't buy more animals. And certainly do not breed if you dont have at least a few hundred dollars set aside for everything you'll need, if not more.

bmm
 
Why is this topic so hard to understand?

Enclosure size is not the concern when you have a male and a sexually immature female. The real problem is related to her developing eggs that she is too small to safely lay. This is called egg binding. This will not immediately manifest itself, but would be a problem before a year has passed.

This is my suggestion:

IF YOU HOUSE A MALE AND A YOUNG FEMALE TOGETHER, YOU ARE PLACING THE FEMALES LIFE IN JEOPARDY. IT IS QUITE POSSIBLE THAT SHE WILL DIE!

That is really the crux of this basic husbandry principle that many seem insistent on violating. If your friend won't listen to basic reasoning then there is not much else that you can do. If he insists on carrying through with this ill conceived plan, make the suggestion that he not spend very much on the snakes.
 
You are a true friend to animals if you do that. Hopefully your friend won't make the mistake of also thinking breeding to living creatures together is a game.

I have been around animals my whole life, and snakes about 3 years or so. My first clutch is in the incubator now, and let me tell you with a fairly high and stable income, and lots of time on my hands....the work to get to this point was quite a lot and at times tight on money. And your friend won't actually make any money. Because intial costs put out for just one pair goes far over whatever you can hope to make from the one clutch.

Good luck.

bmm
 
Corn snakes have been known to eat other corn snakes. It's rare, but it does happen. I had a clutch hatch out one year where one baby ate one of it's siblings.
 
Also, if your friend could simply separate the tank he has in two (if it's big enough) but as BMM said, if he can't afford to take care of two snakes then why not just get one??
 
Deciding to breed before you actually buy your first animal. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Anyway..here's a thought if he must have two. Which is dumb, but okay, put one in the tank and one in a cheaper enclosure like a rubbermade. If he can't afford a rubbermade I suggest he uses his allowance for something he actually needs instead of snakes which, by my guess, he will get bored with in about an hour.
 
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