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Corn Snakes - Easy Pet to keep !!! |
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Well, you
couldn't really get anything easier. Corn snakes happily
live on pre-killed deep frozen mice bought from the pet shop.
They don't insist on live food, as do some other snakes.
You just thaw out a mouse when required and put it in his
vivarium when he isn't looking and shut the door. He very
quickly catches the smell of it and finds it.
Nowadays,
he takes his time over sniffing it for a while, but
almost always he goes for it and performs the remarkable
act of swallowing something larger than his own head. |
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When he was very young -
about three months old and around 14 inches long - he had
two 'pinkies' (baby mice) per week; cost 25p each. As he
got older and bigger he graduated to larger mice and only
once a week. You might ask why mice? Can't he be fed on
bits of chicken or whatever? Well, no, he can't. He needs
a balanced diet, like everybody else. And being a
carnivorous animal, he needs to get all his vitamins and
minerals etc from the animal he eats. So he needs a whole
mouse, not just the protein he would get from pieces of
meat. Mice are their natural diet in the wild, though
they will take small birds and lizards, too. The farmers
in Carolina and other States in America love them,
because they eat the mice that plague their cornfields -
hence the name. While we're on names, the scientific name
for the Corn snake is Elaphe Guttata Guttata, a mixture
of Latin and Greek meaning 'smooth' and 'blotchy' (referring
to the skin).
Now that he is
over three years old and an adult, he takes one very
large mouse per week - 50p each. He doesn't feed, though,
when he is going into shedding mode; or PST as I call it
(Pre Shedding Tension). He gets a little jumpy and isn't
interested in coming out to see the world at all - let
alone eating. He just wants this old damn skin to stop
itching like crazy and to be rid of it. He secretes an
oil (snake-oil) from under his old skin which helps it
separate from the new one. This causes his eyes to go
cloudy for a few days while this is happening - his eye,
as you probably know, never closes as he has no eyelid.
He has a transparent scale over his eye instead and this,
like the rest of his skin, is shed when the time comes.
When he does
decide it is time to shed - how he decides, I don't know
- he becomes quite active and starts rubbing his
nose on whatever happens to be in front of him at the
time. This breaks the skin away from around his lips on
both upper and lower jaws and by working at this, gets it
to start peeling back, so that it is like a collar round
his neck. He then chunters around working the skin back
until it catches on a piece of log or somesuch. Once he's
managed to snag it, he slows down a lot, but carries on
moving forward carefully, while the skin peels off him in
the same way a lady might peel off a stocking - it comes
off inside out. Sometimes it all comes off in one piece,
but if it is a bit more brittle than usual, it breaks in
several places and he has to get the remainder snagged on
something again. It is important that he does get rid of
it all, right off the tip of his tail, because if it is
left there then there is a chance of it cutting off the
blood supply and the tip would then eventually drop off.
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Once he has
done it - and it only takes about ten to fifteen minutes
- he is a right happy little chap and is all curious
about the world again and wants to come out and have a
run around on my arms and various parts of the room, like
the huge sofa I have, that I allow him to explore on. If
he got into some parts of my room here, it could take
hours to get him out, so I don't just give him complete
freedom to go where he pleases, but let him, under
supervision, explore here and there. After about twenty
minutes out of his vivarium he is usually quite happy to
go back into it - I never forcibly get him out or put him
away. I just open the glass front and if he wants to come
out then he does so, onto my arms; if he doesn't want to
then he stays inside. Likewise, when he is out, I just
hold him close to his vivarium so he realizes where he is
and he slides off into his home under his own steam. He
does, however, quite often seem to stop with a couple of
feet still hanging out, until I nudge him along a bit; I
think he forgets how long he has got. Intelligence is
certainly not snakes' strong point! He is now about as
big as he is going to get, at around 5 feet long - it is
very difficult to measure him absolutely accurately!
After shedding he is ready for a mouse, so I always feed
him either that day or the next. When he was still
growing fast - about 1 inch per week at one stage - he
shed his skin roughly once a month or so; nowadays it is
about two months between sheds, depending on the time of
year.
From about
Christmas time to mid March he doesn't feed very much, if
at all. He isn't actually hibernating, because I don't
cool him off during winter, but his metabolism,
nevertheless, does slow down somewhat. All he needs is
some fresh water to drink now and then. During the rest
of the year when he is his usual active self, he will
quite often take water from the bowl before I've even put
it down; he does seem to like fresh water in the morning! He really is a friendly character
and though he doesn't wag his tail like a dog, you can
tell that he is pleased to see you - romantic twaddle,
maybe, but he does seem happy and contented.
When I'm at
home I change his water on a daily basis, but I can go
away for a few days at a time and leave him to himself
quite happily: how many other pets can you safely do this
with? I just have to put two bowls of water in his
vivarium instead of one, just in case he craps in one of
them.
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And that's
about it - they really are an enjoyable pet to have
around and like the title of this page suggests, they are
easy to keep. Which probably explains, partly at least,
why they are becoming more and more popular as pets. Why
not think about it the next time your child asks about
pets; or, on the other hand, if you are a bit younger,
ask your parents about it!!!
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