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what makes corn snakes so special?

B

Brian88

New member
So why corn snakes?

I have an 8 yo daughter who has been agitating for a herp for nearly a year. Corns seem like a good choice, but so do bearded dragons.

Any of you out there have both? Pros, cons?
 
Well i will say i love my corns. First of all they are very easy to care for and low maintnence after you have there enclosure set up. They are very calm so you dont have to fear getting bit too much other than a few exceptions and a few hatchlings which usually grow out of it rather quickly. If you do get bit it doesnt hurt(the best i can describe is kind of like being touched by velcro) you probably wont even know you got bit unless u saw it happen. I cant speak for adults because i dont have any yet. If say you have to go out of town for a week you dont need someone "snake sitting" you can just give them an extra water bowl and they will be fine until you get back. You can take them out and play with them which you cant do with other animals. They dont "need" attention other than regular things such as cleaning, feeding, providing fresh water other than that they are perfectly content chilling in there hides. Always a plus they eat once a week and poop and pee at the same time a couple days later for easy spot cleaning with certain substrates. I change out my substrate about once a month i am not sure what is the norm. And as a bonus there are 100s of different morph combinations and i am sure you will find one that "forces and i mean forces" you to buy it lol. Try this site for some ideas as to what you or your daughter might like http://iansvivarium.com/morphs/species/elaphe_guttata/.
They are fairly inexpensive compared to other snakes. Having come here there are a bunch of breeders so you should be able to find something pretty soon if you are looking they are in the heart of breeding season. I love my snakes I currently own 11 and i have no cons in my opinion they make perfect pets. Wish you guys luch finding a new pet corn or not.
 
I have both. Bearded dragons, I love as well as my corn. Our bearded dragon is very laid back as is our corn snake. The bearded dragon we have is much more active than the corn snake for me personally and I enjoy watching him chase his food. Bearded dragons and corn snakes can both be tamed very easily. If I had to chose one pet over the other for an an 8 year old it would be a hard choice indeed. Personally, I think she might have more fun with the bearded dragon, but my personal recommendation is that you make it your pet as well and help to take care of it. I know that probably does not need to be said, but nonetheless there you have it. Bearded dragons can be fed many items your going to be eating yourself, but there are foods to avoid as well. I maintain feeder roaches, mice colonies, etc. for my bearded dragon and my corn also enjoys the mice. Mice if you decide to breed your own rather than buy frozen is another learning experience. I'd suggest 2-3 females per male if your going to breed for food for your bearded dragon and or corn snake and definitely research all of this before you buy. My mice enclosure remains odor free for weeks on end, but in the beginning I could not stand the smell after day 2 as I did not know how to set them up properly to keep the smell down. Roaches, the flightless kind, are another feeder item I prefer to maintain for my bearded dragon. I keep a small colony and these are very easy as well as I feed them chicken feed and garden/kitchen scraps. Any choice you may make either way though is bound to be a good educational experience for your little one and well worth doing if only for that learning experience.
 
Bearded dragons are special lizards, BUT they can be complicated. They need to be fed every day, live insects and a kind of particular salad. They need supplements. They need expensive lighting. They need a VERY specific temperature. They poop every day, and it is smelly and hard to clean up!

Cornsnakes are _simple_ to care for. Even a baby only needs to be fed every 5-7 days. An adult is very happy on a 14-day feeding schedule. That means one poop every 14 days. Easy to spot clean in aspen. They eat frozen mice. But one for each feeding or stock up your freezer. They don't need lighting. They _do_ need a thermostat and thermometer, but those things should last the lifetime of your snake. They _do_ need an escape-proof viv, and are much harder to recover than an escaped dragon.

There is _no way_ an 8 year old can maintain a dragon alone, without a ton of help with research, grocery shopping, food prep, etc. All you have to do for a cornsnake is thaw a mouse, scrub a water bowl, pick up a poop once per feeding.
 
I also have both, and really can't offer much more than Carpe Serpentis did. However, IMO the beardies are much more labor intensive than corns. As said above, there are many foods to avoid with beardies, so you really need to do your homework and probably keep a list. We keep a kitchen style garbage can for crickets, so that we can order 1000 at a time; this makes them much much cheaper. I have also heard good things about the dubia roaches for beardies food, but have not tried them myself.

It's really your call, obviously. I have both and prefer snakes, but that's just me. Good luck!!!
 
Nanci got in while I was typing. I agree with her very much. One of our beardies belongs to our nine year old, and we end up doing a lot of the work. That said, a kid may get bored when the snake hides for a week straight. Whatever you choose, good luck!
 
I agree with much of what Nanci and Joba posted as well if not all of it. I really think one must co-adopt the pets which ever route you decide to go, but corn snakes are definitely much less time intensive and less costly in setup etc. It really is a hard decision and one I made easy by getting both and also taking on much of the responsibility as well. Yes, we do and have always let our children participate in everything from feeding to cleaning, it is always supervised with our youngest who is only 11.
 
I have a 6 and 5 year old. So, clearly, I'm the caretaker of our reptiles. If for no other reason, I love our corn because she is so so so easy to care for! As a parent, I highly recommend them because of ease of care.

With that said, we got a blue tongue skink in Dec. because we wanted something a bit more interactive. The snake is a growing girl, so between shedding once a month and 2 days to digest every week, there are a lot of hands off times.
We chose BTS over a beardie for several reasons, all related to ease of care (its a theme with me), they don't require live food, don't require uv light, and only eat once a week (approx. as adults)....so, you may want to check out bluies. We adore ours. He's out and about with us every day! And is just a funny, quirky little lizard.

But love our corn. She's just beautiful, easy, and sweet. What more could you want?
 
Thank you all so much for the great replys! The pro's and cons mentioned all sound really reasonable. And yes everyone here knows who's really going to be maintaining the snake, lol. I like the beardies because you can house three together and they are very active during the day and therefore seem to have more personality than a nocturnal snake. The lizards and amphibians I've kept through the years have always been the types that aren't to be handled often. Charlotte (8 yo) wants something 'petable' and her sister already has a leopard gecko, so it's down to a small snake or beadies. The ease of maintenance is attractive, they should be a breeze compared to the veiled chamelon I had, and with a longer lifespan so it wont die on us after 4 years. I had forgotten about the skinks. Back in the day they were wild caught or hugely expensive. Do they bite? That's a big issue for Charlotte unfortunately.
 
Two years ago, our kids wanted a reptile. We brought home a young Bearded Dragon. Spent about $300 on the set up and got our tank from friends. Loved the beardie but didn't realize how much they eat!!! We were spending about $20/week on crickets for ONE Beardie. We lived on a farm with cows, chickens, dogs and cats. This beardie was more expensive to feed than half the farm animals!! So we re-homed the Beardie (First time I've EVER re-homed a pet) and two years later, our kids decided to pool their money together and buy a cornsnake from a local breeder.

Our cornsnake: Best pet ( besides our dog) I've ever had. SO easy to maintain, very inexpensive and incredibly tame. Our three kids are in love with her, they have now seen her shed and are responsible for keeping feeding/shedding/care records for her. Great learning experience, and I must admit ...I love her the most. I'm fascinated with her, and we're having a ton of fun having her a part of our family. Unlike the Beardie, we can leave for the weekend and not worry. The beardie was on a 12hr light on/off timer, but he needed fresh crickets and fresh veggies daily. We had to give him supplements on his food, mist him and I found they poop so much that they are much stinkier than the cornsnake.

All in all, for someone new to reptiles, I could not be any happier with the decision to get a cornsnake :) Good luck to you with your decision xx
 
There are plenty of captive bred BTS. They are more than a beardie, because they have small littered. But you can find them in the $100 range. Ours certainly doesn't bite. Any animal can bite, but they are known for their gentle nature. Check out the caresheet on WWW.bluetongueskinks.org if you want to look into them.
 
** Just read your last post. Our youngest is 8 years old, and I must agree, that a cornsnake doesn't do much unless you bring it out of its viv. Ours wishes it was more active, and I know lizards/beardies are much more personable. For your 8year old daughter, I would say the bigtime downer to a corn is they hide ...a lot. But on a plus side, cornsnakes are known for being healthy and living for 15+years. I have a friend who's 18 year old daughter has a corn she got when she was 6. It's pretty neat, she still has it and really loves that snake that has been with her almost her entire life.
 
Brian, check out some beardie forums. My wife found overwhelmingly people say to NOT house multiple beardies together. I know they do that in the pet stores, but apparently there is a lot of domineering behavior that goes on but may not look like such to us. We were going to get two and put them together, and then unfortunately found ourselves looking for another complete setup to keep them apart.
 
Allidraggy is also 8, and is herp-crazy. She does get frustrated at times because Wadjet isn't as interactive as she'd like, but Wadjet has been a good pet for her-easy to care for, likes to hang out with her on the couch when she's watching Jeff Corwin, and generally is just a chilled out snake. She does hide, and isn't always the most interesting pet to watch, but she's a good pet.

I will say that we adopted Wadjet from a family that had originally gotten her as a pet for a 9 yr old-said 9 yr old is now a teen and was less interested in snakes, so she was a full grown adult who was used to being handled, and handled by kids, when we got her.

--Donna
 
I don't know about BTS, but one thing that frustrated me a little bit about a dragon was, when I had time to handle her, in the evening, she was SOUND asleep. Like, could not wake up! I am strongly considering a BTS if I get another lizard.

And I agree- it's not recommended to keep dragons together. They can REALLY fight, and bite off limbs, tails, etc.
 
Hmm, good point, Nanci. Our light is set to go on at 7 am and off at 7 pm, cause that's basically the kids' day too. But he goes to bed by 6 pm (again not a problem for us) but would be for someone just getting home then. I guess you could try getting one on a 10th to 10 schedule, Nanci. Not sure how easy they are to change sleep cycles.
 
When you house beardies together, the dominant ones can and will attack others. They can lose toes or tips of their tails. Our beardie was a rescue and is missing a couple of toes and the tip of her tail.
 
I have both also, LOVE my corns, my dragons are high maintenance like Nanci said lol. They are both sweet and handleable but take alot more work. I had my two housed together for a while until one started starving the other...would literally keep her away from the dish. Seperated them, no more issues.
 
This is great information. Thanks! I've ordered "cornsnakes in captivity" book but will probably have more questions. This is a really great group of people here.
 
The two best books are Kathy Love and Don Soderberg. I don't know the titles, though. You can get by with either one, but they are both different, so it's nice to have both.
 
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