Reptile & Amphibian Forums

In the spirit of the pooping thread below...

Whenever I clean cages I take a handful of the old bedding (avoiding really gross parts) and sprinkle it on top of the new bedding. I also always replace the same hides in the same places. I find that my snakes settle down sooner and don't instantly poop as often.

That sounds like a really good idea, I'm going to try that next time.
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1.1 Florida Kingsnake
1.0 Kisatchie Cornsnake

Yes and more.

I found that when raising babies, they had growth spurts. Which seemed to be normal. Then I found their growth slowdowns were effected by changing cages(amoung other reasons). Then like you, I found that if I kept cage furniture from the old cage, same water bowls, hides etc. The snakes would not have these slow downs.

What is funny, people to this day, still question snakes growing and reaching maturity at a fast pace. Yet its those same folks who do not pay attention to what causes them to NOT grow. Muchless what causes them to grow.

I do consider, nature is the very same, some periods have extremely good growth potential and others cause them to slow or stop growth. Its what snakes do. Cheers

Frank has finally said something that makes since.LOL...j/k bro.
Anywho, I have noticed over the years that when a snake is struggling with growth or very picky eater or whatever I will change cages (size etc...).
Most of the time they take off like nobdoy's business.

I have a w/c alterna I collected 3 years ago as a small sub adult.I got her home put her through usual quarantine and then placed her in the 12 quart rubbermaid rack with many other alternas.For almost 2 years this snake struglled and would only eat once in a while and usually just lizards etc..
I moved her to a smaller all clear plastic cage (much lower in profile but same floor space) and she hasn't looked back.She eats twice a week every week and eats un-scented fuzzies with gusto.

I have also had gravid snakes about to lay that would just cruise there cage for days and days (sometimes 15-20 days post pre lay shed) and just as soon as I pulled there cage out and moved it to another slot several feet away (i.e. if she was on top of rack put her on bottom etc..) and they calm right down and lay that day usually.

We have to listen to our animals best we can.Try to give them what they want and not what we want.

L8r Shannon

I have noticed similar things with females of different species that are two to three weeks post pre egg lay shed. They just can't seem to find a suitable place to lay their eggs even though they have a perfectly good egg laying box full of moist spagnum moss in their cage (appeared good to me). I have taken out the egg box, washed it, put in new moss and had them go into the box and start laying within a hour. I have also took out a box and put the same moss in a smaller box and have them start laying within a hour or two. Also just added a little moisture to the moss and wham egg laying starts within a couple hours. RW

Yep, sometimes I will just switch boxes and they start to lay.

Shannon