• 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.

Want A Corn Snake

C

CaseyUndead

New member
Hello! I don't have any corn snakes(yet). But the other day i was at the local pet shop and they had a little baby corn in a glass aquarium. The guy working there asked if i wanted to hold it, and of course i did. I thought that that snake was the most awesome thing.

Ever since then, i've been obsessively researching online. Reading as many webpages as i can about their care, so if i get one i'll be prepared. I went to another local pet shop and held a couple grown-up corns, too. And they seem like they would be an great snake for me. Not huge, so i can handle it myself. Only eat and poop about once a week. Gentle, so i don't have to worry about it getting really agressive toward me. And not too hard to get their temerature right(i live in North Carolina, so it shouldn't be too difficult most of the year).

Problem is, i'm still living with my parents and they don't like reptiles. I've been trying to convince them to let me get one, but haven't been having much luck. Mom's afraid of snakes. Yesterday i went with my mom and sister to the pet shop and showed them a baby corn snake. It convinced my sister that they'd be a good pet. But my mom still said no. After a lot of bugging her about it, she said she'd think about it(yay!). I think, eventually, they'll cave in. They know how persistant(or, they might say "obsessive") i can be. :rolleyes:

Anyway... question time. 1. Has anyone here had to convince parents/roommates/whatever to let you bring a pet snake into the house? If so, what's a good strategy to go about doing that?
2. We already have a 10-gallon aquarium here. If i got a baby, about how long would it be before i'd have to upgrade to a 20-gallon? Or should i just go ahead and get a 20-gallon from the start?
3. I live in North Carolina(near the coast). What would be the best way to heat the one side of their cage? A heating pad, or a light? Most of the year, except in the winter, it's not too bad here. And in the pet shop it looked like they were using some kind of light at the top of the aquarium.
4. Anything else i should know that i might not have read about? Any advice you guys can give me from your experiences would be appreciated :)
 
CaseyUndead said:
Hello! I don't have any corn snakes(yet). But the other day i was at the local pet shop and they had a little baby corn in a glass aquarium. The guy working there asked if i wanted to hold it, and of course i did. I thought that that snake was the most awesome thing.

Ever since then, i've been obsessively researching online. Reading as many webpages as i can about their care, so if i get one i'll be prepared. I went to another local pet shop and held a couple grown-up corns, too. And they seem like they would be an great snake for me. Not huge, so i can handle it myself. Only eat and poop about once a week. Gentle, so i don't have to worry about it getting really agressive toward me. And not too hard to get their temerature right(i live in North Carolina, so it shouldn't be too difficult most of the year).

Problem is, i'm still living with my parents and they don't like reptiles. I've been trying to convince them to let me get one, but haven't been having much luck. Mom's afraid of snakes. Yesterday i went with my mom and sister to the pet shop and showed them a baby corn snake. It convinced my sister that they'd be a good pet. But my mom still said no. After a lot of bugging her about it, she said she'd think about it(yay!). I think, eventually, they'll cave in. They know how persistant(or, they might say "obsessive") i can be. :rolleyes:

Anyway... question time. 1. Has anyone here had to convince parents/roommates/whatever to let you bring a pet snake into the house? If so, what's a good strategy to go about doing that?
2. We already have a 10-gallon aquarium here. If i got a baby, about how long would it be before i'd have to upgrade to a 20-gallon? Or should i just go ahead and get a 20-gallon from the start?
3. I live in North Carolina(near the coast). What would be the best way to heat the one side of their cage? A heating pad, or a light? Most of the year, except in the winter, it's not too bad here. And in the pet shop it looked like they were using some kind of light at the top of the aquarium.
4. Anything else i should know that i might not have read about? Any advice you guys can give me from your experiences would be appreciated :)
Click to expand...

Hello and Welcome to the Forums!!! Yes corns are a great snake to have. I also live in North Carolina (Charlotte).

So lets see yes I have had to convince my parents to let me get my snake. I actually asked them to bring me to the petstore and we all looked and they touched them. So I was extra good :rolleyes: and finally they said I could. But If I was 19 Id leave the house. lol

A 10 gallon cage should be okay for a baby until they are about a year old. Then a 20 gallon should be good. A UTH is a great way of heating a corner of the cage. Just but it on the outside bottom and It should do fine. Also a great book to read is Cornsnakes The Comprehensive Owners Guide by Bill and Kathy Love.

Hope this helped
 
I think that letting your mum know that it will stay in your room (so she doesn't have to see it), and that you will pay for its upkeep - food, vet, housing etc, is a good start. My mum hates the food more than the snake, so keep the mice in an opaque box in the freezer away from the human food. Out of sight, out of mind as they say.

Good luck.
 
as already stated. a 10 gal is good until about a year old. After that a 20 long. A UTH is best but you should also have a thermostat and a digital thermometer with a probe set right on the glass over the UTH, under the substrate. With the thermostat set properly you wont have to worry about it overheating and it wil lshut off the UTH when the room temp is sufficient.

The most common mistake made by new owners is to use a UTH without something to regulate it and without the proper thermometer to measure it.
 
Hi and welcome to the forums. You are an adult, and can move out on your own if you wish. I suggest asking (respectfully, of course) which your mother would prefer, a snake in your room, or you in your own apartment. Don't be whiny or pouty about it, and don't be threatening. This will backfire. Trust me on this one. (No, I haven't done it. I'm speaking from a parent's perspective.)

In the meantime, spend lots of time on this site researching. Especially pay attention to all the "Help! My snake escaped!" threads so you will know what NOT to do. If you can convince your mother to let you have one, the last thing you will want to tell her is that it has escaped and is loose somewhere in her house.

Research care and stuff, and explain to your mother all the details of how to properly house, feed, and otherwise care for a snake. In other words, show her you know what you're doing.

If she is still resistant, well, it's time you began looking to being on your own anyway...
 
If your mom is afraid of snakes, I would show her everything I could about how cornsnakes are so gentle and almost never bite- even in the wild. I would assure her that the lid on the viv would be secure, and that the snake would never leave your room if she didn't want it to.

I convinced my mom to let me have a tarantula in my room when I was a teenager- but she was already pretty worn down by then.

I'd recommend an under tank heater- but realize that without a thermostat or rheostat that heater can and will reach 120F. This will burn your snake. So just get the right equipment to begin with.

Corns don't need UV light, and I was just reading about how UV light can actually cause cataracts in snakes.

There was a funny thread on here about convincing parents to let the kid get a cornsnake, and someone advised him to ask, repeatedly, for I _think_ it was a puppy, (but a horse would work just as well) and keep asking over and over, and point out how he would pay for all the shots, and take it out, and feed it twice a day, etc. Then after 30 (or was it 60?) days, say, well, if I can't have a puppy, can I at least have a corn snake? I only have to feed it once a week, it is clean, doesn't smell, doesn't need shots...

Good luck!

Nanci
 
Thanks everyone! What's the difference between a thermostat and a rheostat?
What size UTH would i need for a 20 gallon tank? are the ones that are made for 20 gallon tanks designed to fit under only half, or would i have to get one designed for a smaller tank?
and... I'm looking at some of this stuff on ebay right now. Is ZooMed a good brand? Because that's mostly what i see.
 
oh, i forgot! I read that the under tank heaters attach to the bottom of the cage. can you un-attach it and put it on another tank, when you upgrade to a bigger one? or is it permanent? And how long do the UTHs last? do they stop working after a few years and need to be replaced, or hold up for a long time?
 
Yup, I'm the mom who had to be convinced. Took my daughter 8 months to wear me down. When that was the only thing she wanted for her birthday for 8 months, I told her that she'd better prepared to do everything for it, because I wasn't having anything to do with it. Also, she had to prepare a list of all the things she had to buy for the thing.

Within three months of buying the thing, I was buying for myself. Of course, worrying when the thing wouldn't eat the maternal instinct came out.... not sure, how long it would have taken to convince me that snakes were cool pets.

Of course, I wasn't scared of them, I just didn't like them.... what did I know? :)

Good luck :)
 
ZooMed works ok, that's what I use. UTHs are designed to be stuck to the tank, but you can also stick it to a piece of glass or ceramic tile or just leave the plastic adhesive cover on it and duct tape it to the bottom of the tank so you can move it later.

A rheostat is basically a lamp dimmer, it adjusts the temperature but thats it. It doesn't account for a change in room temperature, so you always have to keep an eye on the temps and adjust the rheostat accordingly. A thermostat allows you to set the max temp and the thermostat monitors the temp via a probe in the tank and when it cools down, the thermostat turns on the UTH until it hits the max temp you have set, then it shuts off the UTH again. This way it will keep the temp within a few degrees of your target temp no matter how the outside room temp changes.

I've found that Ebay prices on these items are not very competitive, and shipping costs are high. You can find better prices at online reptile supply dealers like reptiledirect.com and reptilesupply.com. Right now reptilesupply.com has the ZooMed 500R thermostat on sale for 19.99 and the 10-20 gal size ZooMed UTH for 10.99 plus shipping. Make sure any thermostat you get has a probe, there's an old model ZooMed thermostat that I mistakenly bought once that has no probe and it's worthless. The 500R has a probe and they work fine, I have 3 of them going right now.
 
Wow, thanks for the advice! I think i'll have to get those ones from reptilesupply, cheaper than anything i saw on ebay.

Now.. a question about feeding. I've looked at rodentpro.com to see how much it would cost to buy frozen mice there, and it looks really reasonable, even with the shipping(compared to $2.00 a mouse at the local pet shop!).
They have the categories "small pinkies", "extra small pinkies", and "large pinkies". If i got a little corn snake, which of those would i start feeding it, and for how long?
They come in packs of 100, and i wouldn't want to waste any... so, how long do they stay good in the freezer? And, if i still had some left when the snake outgrows that size, would it be acceptable to just give the snake two of them until i run out instead of wasting those and getting a bag of a new size mouse?
 
I think some websites have something they call grow-up packs so that you don't have to buy more pinkies than you'll ever use. I'm not too sure though. Someone else will probably be able to tell you more about that.
When I decided to get my snake I had to convince my fiance to let me have it. Don't have to worry about the mom anymore. He refused for a long time and then finally gave in if he never had to look at it. The snake is in its own room now with the door closed. I just kept mentioning it over and over and over until he finally gave in. Ha.
 
Rodentpro doesnt vacuum pack their rodents (or at least my last few shipments with them they havent), so the rodents wont stay fresh as long. I would suggest going with another place like http://www.bigcheeserodents.com/ where you can buy smaller amounts, and they seal everything, and have overall better quality rodents compared to rodentpro (but a little more expensive).

I highly doubt you'll even need 50 pinks untill the snake is big enough for fuzzies, the size of pink depends on the size of the snake, if its very tiny then go with small, if they're bigger then the large pinks will work. If you order large pinks but they end up too big you can just cut the pinks in half. You can give multiples to use them up, bu for using up all 100 its going to take a long time.
 
To add to it a little- with 100 pinks, if the corn is fed every 5 days it will be about 6 feedings a month, now if its fed two pinks each feeding thats 12 pinks a month. It will take 8-9 months to use up all the pinks (unless my math is horribly wrong). At that time most corns are taking hopper sized mice or some even small adults, and most corns are off pinks after 1-3 months.
 
DaemoNox said:
To add to it a little- with 100 pinks, if the corn is fed every 5 days it will be about 6 feedings a month, now if its fed two pinks each feeding thats 12 pinks a month. It will take 8-9 months to use up all the pinks (unless my math is horribly wrong). At that time most corns are taking hopper sized mice or some even small adults, and most corns are off pinks after 1-3 months.
Click to expand...

Wow! That's really helpful! I'm glad i found this messageboard :)
 
I breed my own mice now, but when I bought frozen mice, I would get them from a local reptile show. It's a lot cheaper than pet shops and you don't have to pay for shipping or order 100 of any one size. Pinks are like 3/1.00 and older mice I think are .40 or .50 each.
You might want to look for a reptile show in your area, or a pet shop that specializes in reptiles might have frozen mice cheaper than $2 each.
 
Also if you don't want to order mice online ask your pet store if they sell frozen mice. The mice for $2 each are more for pets, feeder mice are usually cheaper and even small pet stores usually have them. Also a 20 gallon UTH is designed to fit under only half of the tank so you don't have to worry about size. And keep in mind that your corn might not start off so friendly, sometimes it takes a while for them to warm up to you so expect to be bitten a few times (don't worry it doesn't hurt) ;) After they get used to you he/she will be a great pet. Enjoy :)
 
Thanks for all the info everyone! My parents seem to have decided that they are going to buy me a baby corn snake that i'll pick out, along with the heating pad and thermostat i'll need, as a Christmas present. Yay! I can't wait!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top