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Kalleigh Greatballzofire JackAsp JackAsp Kalleigh Kalleigh JackAsp Kalleigh JackAsp Kalleigh JackAsp Kalleigh JackAsp Kalleigh |
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Kalleigh View Profile |
Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
I know that gopher snakes can get up to 8 feet long tho and the pythons i saw were only 6 feet. so could i let my gopher snake play in the back yard when it gets bigger? I would be watching it very closely but looking at it right now they seem very very fast and eager to escape. I just cant see ever being able to let it go in the grass and not having to constantly pick it back up so it doesnt get away. Do people do that with gophers or bull snakes? or is that just a python thing? because the python i saw was actually up in a cobra pose and going around very slowly, it didnt seem to want to escape in any way. i just saw that and thought that i havent heard of any gopher or bull snakes doing that. |
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| 09/03/09 02:12am |
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Greatballzofire View Profile |
Message To: Kalleigh In reference to Message Id: 2066987 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
This is one of my 2 ft x2ft x 4 ft screen cages which are on my front porch. The snakes can go in this during the day, for sunlight and recreation. At night I bring them back in, as the nights are cool. The cage pictured is my fence lizard habitat, but same type cage. I would never chance letting my snakes just crawl around on the ground freely. They are real zippy zoomers, and I tend to be a space cadet when it comes to paying attention. In no time they would get away! |
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| 09/03/09 10:09am |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Greatballzofire In reference to Message Id: 2067074 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
I’m comfortable with taking my bull, Winkle, out in a large wide open grassy area, but I avoid anything that obviously specifically calls out for exploration, because that’s just teasing him. And he is, as you mentioned, much faster than a python. My pines varied. Callisto could be taken out near bushes and things, but you had to be certain you could follow in and get her, beause you WOULD have to. She certainly wouldn’t rush to escape you, but she just wasn’t a "sit still and be good" kind of snake either. She liked to wander around and sniff EVERYTHING. McBain, on the other hand, would happily sit on your shoulders all day long like a ball python, unless he saw a rat in the feeding bucket. Winkle may someday be as manageable as Callisto, but at almost a year of age he still isn’t anywhere close. I can’t imagine he’ll ever be as calm as McBain. Even most pythons aren’t. You know what though? He spends so little time hiding, I can pretty easily imagine free-roaming him. Instead though I’m in the midst of switching him over to a 260-gallon Reptarium. It took me a while to find the 73" undertray for it, but all the wheels are in motion now. Might be fun to bring the whole thing to a summer picnic sometime. |
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| 09/04/09 12:47am |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Greatballzofire In reference to Message Id: 2067074 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
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| 09/04/09 12:57am |
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Kalleigh View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 2067427 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
my gopher snake mj is still to small i think. I’m afraid to put him down on the bed for gods sake, he is very fast and very eager to escape....do you find that the older they get they become more like pets and less like wild animal? pythons seem to get quite domesticated with the whole back yard thing and the calmly being wrapped around there owners arm. now this free range thing, does that mean you let your snakes free all day? Ive seen people do it with huge anacondas, is that what you meant? Can i see some pictures of all your snakes? and do you keep them together? that sounds like a giant tank your getting is that for just one? how big are all of your snakes? |
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| 09/04/09 08:21pm |
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Kalleigh View Profile |
Message To: Greatballzofire In reference to Message Id: 2067074 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
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| 09/04/09 08:26pm |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Kalleigh In reference to Message Id: 2067765 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
I have no pictures of the pine snakes. For most of my adult life, I was completely out of the habit of taking pictures. I did still have McBain when I joined the forum, but I didn’t get a digital camera until after his time was up. He actually looked a LOT like the Nothern Pine pictured in the Audabon field guide though. Callisto, although generally more fun than he was, had a slightly muddier pigmentation. Give me a little time to round up some current pictures of the snakes I do have now and I’ll post them. There’s only three. One bull, one western hognose, and one Madagascan speckled. I do not house any of them together. The pines I did, and they seemed to get along great, even travelling over to greet each other if both released into seperate areas of the room. but McBain actually seemed even happier once he was living alone, since Callisto was the slightly dominant of the two. So I don’t actually suggest keeping snakes together except for breeding. And, yeah, a 260 sounds ridiculous, but it’s only 73X29. That’s smaller than a single mattress. Put an adult Pit on your mattress and tell me he would mind having way more room than that to wander around in. I can fit it in the same place I currently have his 48X21, and it’s cheaper than most significantly smaller cages. It’s just one of those nylon-mesh things that chameleon people use, but horizontal instead of six feet tall. So we’re not talking either the money or the sheer weight of a huge glass tank. Not to mention, i like giving snakes a cage at last two thirds by at least one third their length. Since he’s already five feet long and won’t even be a year old yet for about another week (I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t watched him grow! He more than doubled in size last fall just from September to November, and then kept going) I’m expecting him to be one seriously humungous bullsnake, probably at least seven feet. And there just aren’t that many, say, five foot by two and half foot cages on the market, so he gets a little extra. He won’t mind that any more than a small dog minds having a bigger yard. The other snakes are only 3 and 4 feet, and have cages about their own body lengths, so I think they’ll be happier without a giant bull snake trampling over them all day long. Yours will settle a bit with time and growth. Not only will you get progressively more familiar, but also the bigger they get, the less scary we seem. To a baby, every finger is like a telephone pole. One thing you can do is putting an open-front shirt or bathrobe or something on over the snake. Avoid hevy buttons, zipers, etc, and go for soft, light cloth. That gets them used to climbing over’hanging on to shoulders while in contact with humans, while still feeling hidden but not restricted. Little by little, more and more often, you can move the shirt out of the way for short peeks/touches, and still cover the snake up again in time to maintain security.Another thing that helps is lots of partial cover in the cage. Tinted translucent plastic hides, crushed cardboard tube-tunnels positioned so the snake can spy on you from in there, upside down wicker baskets with big enough decorative openings around the rim for the snake to see out of- anything like that sort of simulates hiding under a bush or in a patch of tall grass, watching everything around and forming a sense of what is and is not normal activity. And if you can only physically interact up to a certain "level," that’s okay for now. Don’t try to rush or push. Find what the snake is okay with, and play that way, and in time you’ll see significantly more relaxed bahavior. Plus, the snake’s not the only one with a learning curve. Handling isn’t just us trying to teach them not to be scared; it’s also them teaching us how not to be scary. The clues will all be there, and with practice, everyone ought to end up playing nice. |
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| 09/05/09 03:55am |
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Kalleigh View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 2067873 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
and ong i cant believe your one year old bull snake is that huge....thats amazing. my snake grew 4 inches now since i got him. its weird he will rattle his tail while i hold him sometimes but he doesnt seem mad. its almost like he just found out he can do it and wants to practice its really weird |
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| 09/05/09 03:41pm |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Kalleigh In reference to Message Id: 2068072 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
The flowerpot sounds good. And, yeah, they love tubes. I think there’s a lot of psychological similarity between rodents and the things that prey on them. Ever have a cat that would sit under the bed for who-knows-how-long, "hiding" but then coming rushing over to get petted as soon as you came home? Obviously, the cat wasn’t really hiding from you. But it was drawn to the same sort of place that a mouse would be drawn to, because hanging out in places like that gives them a survival advantagein the wild: more food. Pits have that streak in them too. It’s quite common to reach into their cage while they’re "hiding" and have them pop right out to see what’s up. And, just as rodents will explore every tunnel around, so will your snake. I really wish I’d had a digital camera back in the pine days to get a picture of my previous Pit cage. It was a 75-gallon filled with ferret-sized Habitrail tubing. it allowed them to climb and "tunnel" at the same time, while still providing the illusion of partial cover, due to the colored tint. They had burrowable substrate AND lots of full hides, but each spent at least 50 per cent of their time (which means most of their awake time, I’d assume) in the tubes. I’d clean the tubes by taking them in the shower with antibacterial dish soap (in a rush I could just spot-clean with wet-naps), and occasionally rearrange the pieces to keep the maze new and interesting. Winkle’s cage, right now, is simpler than I’d prefer, because I’m still using a sideways 55-gallon with a hinged screen top clipped onto the front, and the hinge runs horizontally so the door only has about 6 inches clearance. That rules out big, bulky props, and he’s outgrown most ofhis smaller props. I’ll almost certainly do the ferret-tube thing again once his accomodations are enlarged, or unless I stumble into a better idea. |
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| 09/06/09 04:17am |
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Kalleigh View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 2068287 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
MJ is getting much calmer now , when i hold him he wraps around my hand and just kinda holds on and relaxes for awhile rather then trying to escape, i can put him on the bed now and he just explores slowly instead of trying to escape so i think he s getting much more used to me , he s only like this with me because when my six year old daughter holds him he isnt calm he tries to escape and is always moving around. Do snakes get used to who there owners are? I really enjoy having this breed of snake they are so interesting , he always keeps moving and he climbs and explores, i like that, im not really into snakes that just stay still most of the time. althogh i saw some beautiful albino pythons...wow . are wild albino gopher snakes common? i havent known anyone who has seen one and where my ex lives in penticton he tells me that gopher snakes are everywhere , he sees them all the time. also i was wondering if its the same thing to feed a snake more aften like every 3 days and feed one pinky instead of two every week? whats the difference? one more thing, can i get that anti bactrial alcholhol based hand cleaner that just disolves on my hands and hold him after??? and whats ok to clean his water dish with? i clean it every two days with soap and refill it, but its getting gross and slimy at the bottom, i cleaned it 2 weeks ago along with everything else in the tank by spraying bleach into water and washing it in there and then rinsing it a hundred times but i cant do that daily, isd there anything easier? i just dont want to accidently kill him with bleach or anything, especially after how weird he got with the pine smell when i used the shavings |
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| 09/06/09 05:05am |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Kalleigh In reference to Message Id: 2068293 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
His coloration is normal. Most of the snakes you see pictures of are captive-bred for brighter coloration. My bull is light orange with very clean black crossbars, and my western hognose is yellow with brown polka dots, kind of like a badly drawn child’s picture of a giraffe. Neither color would be typical in nature. Some locales will have more yellow than others, but dull individuals are still quite common in wild populations. And, for that matter, even in captive gene pools; it’s the most photogenic ones that you’ll see the most pictures of. There’s no shame in being a normal-looking snake, though. It’s actually kind of refreshing after seeing nothing but fancy "show-breeds" all the time.My one snake that IS just a normal black and brown color looks just as unique as the fancy ones, when fancy ones are all that’s around to compare him to. Most o those colors do occur innature, even albinos, but they’re rare and, if it’s anyhting that interferes with camouflage, generally very short-lived. Yes, they can certainly tell people apart. They don’t always care, but they can tell. It’s also not unusual for them to consider unfamiliar sizes to be a whole new thing to get used to. They can also have tolerance preferences between cats and dogs, have other individual snakes that they like or dislike more than others, etc. I don’t know how social any of this is to them. It might be no different than preferring one tree branch to another. But they can tell. And any kind of stress will usually make them head for what’s familiar and nonthreatening. Hand cleaners are safe as far as handling goes. Amphibians are very chemically sensitive, like fish, but reptiles are fine. The smell may or may or may not bother him. If it does, he’ll either get used to it or ou’ll come up with something else. You can clean dishes with alcohol. But it really shouldn’t be getting slimy so fast. Sounds like there’s a lot of bacteria in there getting tracked around. I’d change that water every day. If yourt schedule is too hectic to scrub it every morning, get a spare dish and alternate. Also, is it plastic? Plastic is more porous than you’d think, so stuff like that builds up in it more easily. Glass and ceramic are easier to clean. There’s a little bit of argument about the feeding regimen you’re talking about. Some say every three days is fine as long as the feedings are very light. Some say it’s better to give them a little more every 5-7 days to give their digestive cycle a more natural rest cycle before each feeding. I generally shoot for every 5 days with babies, although sometimes somebody gets extra because somebody else had leftovers. Shed cycles and what not can get my snakes on different schedules sometimes, so there’ve been times Winkle got fed early. There’ve also been times that I was in a hurry on Day Five so just shrugged and let him go 6 or 7 days. One time, about a month or two ago, he actually fasted or 20 days, most of it right before a shed, but usually he’s pretty much on schedule. My previous Pits ate small meals every 2-3 days as babies. I saw no post-meal lethargy and had no handling or regurgitation problems, but they also did not show any unusual growth or activity. Winkle stayed just as frisky on way bigger meals, and grows amazingly even with time between his feedings. It’s quite possible that spacing the meals out actually improves digestive efficiency, because their body has just enough time to go back into calorie-saving mode. Also, it might be worth mentioning that McBain died of organ failure when he was about 9 years old, which like a human dying at 40. The vet who did the biopsy believed it to be a congenital problem caused by inbreeding in their parental lineage (I don’t know who the breeder was; I got both he and his sister from a pet shop) and there were also health issues with his sister Callisto (they lived together but were never cooled down for breeding; they were just pets) that support that theory. (I lost Callisto at about 6 to a congenital form of cancer, X-rays showed she already had arthritis forming in two of her vertebrae when she died, and BOTH of them developed a cataract in the right eye.) But in the interest of fairness, there are also some decent environmental hypotheses. Organ failure can be caused by bacteria, and two snakes living in the same cage, both eating live prey (not fed together, obviously!) exponentially increases bacterial dangers. AND, organ failure is one of the arguments in favor of that "rest period" argument for spacing the meals out. Do I know that the frequent early feeding regimen was a contriuting factor? No. To be honest, I’m not sure I’m not sure i even THINK it was. But, to give a real answer, I also can not honestly say that I’ve never had problems from feeding lighter and more often, because I don’t KNOW that I haven’t. And too many other people don’t know either, because most snakes change owners several times over the course of their life. So maybe it’s being paranoid to say you have to mostly stick with the 5 day rule, but if I say you shouldn’t then I feel sort of like John McCain running around with cancer saying "I’m proof that nuclear subs are safe!" Hey, maybe they are. He could have gotten cancr a lot of other ways. But, um.. maybe he’s not the best spokesman for that? |
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| 09/06/09 02:33pm |
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Kalleigh View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 2068419 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
you might be right about the pot because hes sleeping under it and not in it. he is going threw his less active period right now but he is eating very well still and when i hold him he s active so im gonna assume he just gets like that. my tank is 30 gallons and has a mesh lid, the heating pad under it honestly doesnt seem to do anything at all and the light i use is 75 watts. he likes the shade the best it seems. he might be to hot but i kno where i caught him it gets to be about 40 degrees so its usually a very very hot place. i found him right beside the lake in a cool shady place tho. he looks very healthy and is alot thicker then when i first found him. i think he is due for his second shed because last time he got kinda still. altho he will eat knowmatter what last time he ate the day befor he shed. hes a little piggy and never turns down food ever. my water dish is ceramic i think, i got it from the pet store it kinda looks like stone. i kinda like the way MJ is coloured im not a fan of the dull yellow color. bright orange looks good, but i think that the black white and grey look very eye catching. im glad i have my normal looking snake because it looks like its becoming more rare to see then the fancy bred ones. i was wondering why people trade there snakes so much? its very unlike other animals eh. very interesting. i think in a few years i might get an albino ball python....they are so beautiful. so once i clean his cage again you sudgest using that care fresh stuff as substrate? and if i make it deep he might burrow? my only question is that it doesnt really hold up easily, wont his tunnel just cave in instantly? |
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| 09/08/09 05:13pm |
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JackAsp View Profile |
Message To: Kalleigh In reference to Message Id: 2069411 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
Some diseases are more common than others. Risks can be minimized, but stuff still gets through sometimes. I’m so used to Farenheit, when you said "40 degrees" I was like "OK, so what do you consider COLD?!" |
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| 09/09/09 04:43am |
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Kalleigh View Profile |
Message To: JackAsp In reference to Message Id: 2069699 Letting snakes hang out in the back yard?
I got aspen shavings and omg waaay better. He instantly made a little tunnel, he s getting ready to shed so he s a bit lazy right now but im sure he will make more. i buried the flower pot deeper in the substrate and he uses it now im sure it was just to high up for him. thanks for the advice im pretty happy with the set up now, i think its finally done. |
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| 09/11/09 01:44am |
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