Courtesy of Happy Gecko Sticky Situation
Doing anything with animals can be a little hard sometimes. Commonplace things for non-herp keepers can add stress if you own multiple reptiles. For instance, taking vacation, working, running a business…the list goes on. If you’re like me, your reptiles are constantly in the back of your mind when you do these things (some things like vacation never happen!) and you wonder how they’re doing, if they’re moist enough, if they have enough food or even what the heck they do when you’re not there watching intently. With the geckos I keep heating isn’t too much of an issue. Living on the Oregon Coast allows me to keep temps at a pretty good level. Our mild weather makes it easy.
Our Move with Reptiles
We recently did a move from one small town to another. It wasn’t a huge move but the animal transfer was something I wasn’t looking forward to orchestrating.
The first thing you want to make sure of is you have enough deli cups or containers to move your animals in safely. Be sure that your deli cups have holes! I’ve always got heat packs and cool packs ready just in case weather decides to be cranky in either extreme. You might have some animals in quarantine and others which aren’t. My quarantine animals are always handled last and moving is no exception. They were moved in separate coolers, on separate trips and their enclosures, tools, etc were kept separate from the established colony’s enclosures.
I mostly use tubs for my animals, and all are the same style so they stack nicely. This was a major bonus. I’d imagine having glass enclosures would be a bit more involved when moving.
One by one, cup your animals, put their masking tape ID label on the corresponding deli cup and pull the supplies out of the tub into one tub.
Never pull any supplies out of an enclosure until you’re sure you’ve taken the animal out first. I’ve heard a horror story or two of movers who have lost an animal because they took the supplies but forgot the animal! You don’t want this to happen to any of your crew.
For moving or for vending shows I have a large cooler that I use to transport my animals. This helps keep temperatures from fluctuating too much for your animals and keeps them either cool or warm depending on outside forces and what your animals need. If the temps are fairly warm for your species you’re transporting, using supplemental cool packs wrapped in a few pieces of paper with a buffer between the cool pack and any animal is a great tool. The same for heat packs. Never place a cool pack or heat
Courtesy of Happy Gecko Sticky Situation
Since I “only” have forty animals, my established crew didn’t take up too much space and all fit in the cooler fairly well. We didn’t need to use any cool or heat packs while moving our sticky little geckos over, and things went very seamlessly. We brought in our stacks of tubs and supplies, set them up and replaced the geckos into their enclosures with ease. Our small rack from Animal Plastics (non-affiliate) was also pretty easy to move, and pretty light-weight. We were able to do so in one trip from the old house to the new one.
Moving with Amphibians
Our amphibians were a tad more interesting to move. We have four axolotls. They slosh very easily, so we used a tub with a lid in another tub for our three baby axolotls. Another easy transport system for axolotls are those plastic bags that pet stores use for fish. That is—if your axolotls are small enough for them! I try to stay away from any needless plastic in my home, though and opted for the tubs we already had. Our adult female Catalina had to be moved in a 2 gallon bucket we use for water changes, which was pretty easy.
After transferring them to our new house all they needed was a plug-in for heat for the desert species, some misting for the tropicals and a nice meal to settle into their new surroundings. Our axolotls waited in their tubs while we re-filled their tanks with treated water. One really nice thing about the new house we are in is that we have a room dedicated to our reptiles, now. It was a major upgrade from our guest room/herp room combo in our old house. You can’t really get better than that as a hobbyist.
The biggest thing to remember when doing a move is to be prepared. For weather changes, make sure your animals are at the right temps and that you have provisions to help with temps if they aren’t, have water to mist them with, extra paper towels, extra deli cups and a nice cooler to keep them happy. Having a temp gun and a few temp gauges in the cooler also help you to keep an eye on the health and happiness of your little loves while you’re going through something as stressful as a move.