Corn Snakes, Beauty in the least?/-/ReptileApartment.com

Authored by Todd Cornwell Unique Birthday Party Parties for Kids & Reptile Rescue

Corn Snakes, Beauty in the least?

Corn snakes make great first pets, brightly colorful, easy to handle, and fun to watch, while there are several good care sheets out there, here are a few tips to help you and your pet have a long wonderful time together.

Corn snakes are native to the United States and are found throughout the southeastern and central parts. They stay relatively small, averaging 3-5 feet, and typically are reluctant to bite. They’re diurnal, which means active during the day. So as you go about your work around the house, they’re wandering around their cage. A typical corn snake, can be maintained in a 20 + gallon cage. I recommend for a female the cage be a little bigger, what you would like is 2 sides of the cage to be as long as your snake. So a 5 foot female, can easily be kept in a 30 gallon tank.

Substrates

Substrate is relatively easy, I recommend Cypress mulch. There are many substrates that can work just fine, aspen, pine, shredded newspaper, organic topsoil, etc. Here’s why I use cypress if I can get it. Cypress holds humidity very well, doesn’t have the dust pine does, and doesn’t mold like aspen. Being from the Eastern United States, corns like it a little humid. I’ve seen respiratory problems with corns kept on pine. The fine dust can enter into their lungs, and cause issues. The next best thing is organic topsoil, there will be no pesticides or chemicals in the soil, and will maintain humidity as well. For all my substrate, I fill a gallon freezer bag with substrate, and place it in the freezer for 24-48 hours, this should kill off any “bugs” who might be residing in the substrate. Mite & tick eggs are so small, they can easily go through the wood shredder, and be packaged up in your bag of mulch. Then, when the temperatures and time is right, they can hatch out. This trick might save you from having to do a mite treatment.

Heating Corn Snakes

Courtesy of Ryan Vince Photography

One big issue I’ve seen is overheating. Corn Snakes like it 75-85, but being a native species, a little colder, or a little hotter, does no harm. Most of us keep our houses, well within the tolerances of corn snakes (66-70 in the winter, 78-82 summer), so for most corn snake owners, it’s better to have no external heat sources. During the winter and after feeding, I turn on a 40 watt light, above their basking area, for a couple of hours a day. Just to aid in digestion, if I use any lights other than that, it’s to provide a day/night cycle, so I use a compact fluorescent bulb, it provides the light, but no real heat.

I have had several clients call me, after finding their baby corn snake dead in the cage. Most times it’s been from overheating them, (they bought what the pet store told them they needed), they had a undertank heater, and were running a heat bulb from the top, and while the little temperature strip they had put on the side of the cage read 85 degrees, where the poor snake was hanging out was over 100 degrees! The water in the shallow dish all evaporated, and the poor snake died.
Feeding is either the most fun part, or the worse part of owning a pet snake. Most snakes however, will readily adapt to eating pre-killed food. A baby corn snake, may take a while though to get to convert, but a newborn pinkie mouse cannot hurt your snake, so until they grow up a little, it is not a reason to worry. The biggest issue while feeding, is making sure you don’t leave your prey items unsupervised, a live mouse will chew on everything to see if it’s edible. And your snake is edible to a mouse. And if you snake doesn’t eat it right away, you could come back to a snake that is suffering from bite marks all down its spine.
One option that makes corn snakes so attractive is all the color morphs (color patterns), they can exhibit. There are hundreds of varieties of either color, or pattern that make these small snakes, such a neat first pet. This is the snake I usually recommend to all potential snake owners to consider as their first foray in the great & wonderful world of snakes.