Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi, My King loves to climb and in his viv i have some climbing media, i had heard that it was ok to use grapevine as a media, but the price is excessive from the stockests, i have a grape vine in the back garden, with old branches and new ones, is it ok to use these if so, do i need to steralise them? if so how?
thanks for your help.
all the best garystewb (fairly new to the snake world).

I would bet your kingsnake loves to try to find a way out of the cage, and that is why he/she is climbing. Or, when hungry, the snake is cruising for food.

Kings are ground-dwelling creatures and in the wild spend most of their time hidden from view, below the surface.

In my mind, a better cage setup would be to have a nice temperature gradient (and that includes a cool area), alot of burrowable substrate, and a moisture source. I bet you will see less climbing attempts and more time in and under the surface.

It isn't that adding branches is bad, it may just be giving the snake more to climb on when he/she is looking to get out of the cage.

Make sure the snake is not too hot and trying to escape. Your cage right now should have a cool area for the snake to retreat too.

Good luck. And I have no idea about grape vine from your yard. The dried grape wood sold at stores and online is durable for terrariums, and is completely oven-dried before sold.

Hi, Thanks for the input, my viv had a temp gradiant of 85 to 75 with hides at each end with a moist moss pot, he spends most of his life in his moss pot. Feeding wise he is on about 4 fluffies a week, feeding on a tuesday. as you say he is probibly climbing to find an escape, he is more active from sunday to tuesday, this is probibly in hunt for food. He is about 8 months old now and about 2' 4" and is a blotched king, beleived to be an apalachicola king x.
thanks garyb