Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Well that was a lot of interesting reading down below...

There was a lot of theory, a bunch of field observations, and very little actually discussing how go about applying any of this to our captive husbandry. Thats what I want to do.

Last year I moved from the north east (humid as a sauna) to Colorado (bone dry) and I had to adapt my husbandry in some very significant ways. I keep mostly desert species (ant hill pythons, sthenodactylus geckos, cal kings, etc) and when I lived in an area with high humidity I was deceived into believing that they liked it as dry as possible. Turns out that the ambient humidity was simply more than adequate for them. All of my animals did great with aspen and a water bowl. I would use humidity chambers for gravid females, "hibernating" snakes (more on this later), and a few humidity loving sp. (black milks).

For the first three years that I kept a large colony of anthill pythons I only saw one drink once.

However this past year in CO, I had more shedding issues that ever before, a tough time with incubation (first time ever that I got several full term dead in egg clutches), several snakes that did not bounce back from breeding efforts quite as vigorously as usual, a colony of geckos that mysteriously stopped breeding (I had never watered them in over a year back east) and baby snakes, especially the little anthills, suffering from constipation.

All of a sudden I see the adult anthills drinking every once in a while.

Hmmm???

Well it didn't take me too long to realize that some changes were in order.

The biggest changes that I made was going from a thin layer of aspen to a thick layer of cypress as a substrate. I started spraying and STIRRING the bedding once a week..ish. With my kings I started using boards as hides. The large board covers the length of the tub but only half the width. The large surface area allows some really nice humid pockets to form if you spray under it every once in a while. This is MUCH easier to manage than having 25 adult snakes, each with a "humidity chamber" that needs to be maintained.

I started spraying the geckos every few days and moistened the sand under one hide. They come running out and lick the drops. Hopefully I will start getting eggs again soon.

With hatchlings, I also switched to cypress, and with the hatchling anthills I evened switched to using covered tubs to increase ambient humidity.

The adult anthills are the only ones still on aspen.

So lets put some numbers to it. Humidity on the east coast was rarely below 75% but in CO it is usually closer to 50% or less with the heat on in the house during winter. I havn't actually measured the humidity in different parts of the cages but I think I am going to try. I will report back on this.

anyone else care to chime in about how you manage humidity in your collection, where you live, and your results... I'd love to hear about it...

Cheers

Just quick anecdotal info for what's going on in my snakeroom.

I've got copperheads (coastal and desert types), pigmies, corns, kings, and a woma. I have no active moisture management going on (yet). The room is sealed up more or less, no windows just a single 36" exterior door that leads to the garage. I live in coastal south east Virginia. All animals are on aspen.

During the heat of the summer, my ambient room humidity bounced around 80%-90%, even with a window air conditioner running to keep the room around 83 degrees F. A ceiling fan helps prevent a thermograde in the room

Now with cooler temps outside, I've killed the AC, and fired up a small cereamic heater to keep the temps around 83, and my humidity has dropped to about 50% and I'm filling up the water bowls more frequently.

With the lower humidity, some waterbowls get left dry for a week or so. By the end of the week, I'll typicallly find animals hanging out in the waterbowls. Within minutes of refilling them, I have lots of drinking going on. I refill with jugs from high above, which splatters a bit and gets their attention.

Now I've forgotten specifically what it is you mentioned in your post. I'll p.s. this post if I left something out.
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Tom

"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

Once I stick a humidifer in the room and get humidity back up to 80% I expect I'll see a lot less drinking going on, but will certainly update then.
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Tom

"The more people I meet, the more I like my snakes"

Nice post Zack! You certainly have to make adjustments that are corresponding to your conditions. I grew up a military brat and we moved a lot. I have always kept snakes and there are definite differences we must adjust for depending on where we live.
But I don't think we should stop there either, which is what I think FR is getting at; progressive husbandry. I think that we should be experimenting with conditions and taking note of the results. It seems to me that most are stuck in "well this is what has worked for... back in..." Do we have more information now? More results? How about trying to find out what is best for the snakes? How do we provide that? How do we measure that? These are the questions we should be discussing. When it comes down to those things FR is spot on.
Yet we are still getting a million posts "why can't I get my snake to eat?" I'm sorry all but when the forums are dominated with posts that talk about basic husbandry problems and these wild animals being domesticated in the same thread (and bred to fit our shoe boxes) there are some serious deficiencies in actual content and useful information about real progress in this hobby. Most of it sounds like a spoiled five year old that got told NO. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Thanks again for the post Zack.

AND....FR lets see some picks please

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"Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew!" Charlie Papazian

Hi Zach,
I suffer from low humidity this time of year too. It wrecks havoc on my own sinuses at times and is tough on kings/milks in my cages too.

Some years ago I tried raining baby kings/milks in boxes with about 3 inches of moist coir fiber, which I did let dry out from time to time just to vary it up a bit. The snakes did fantastic, hardly ever took a drink, never had those blisters that care sheets attribute to moist conditions, ate like crazy, and had perfect, supple skin (like wildcaught kings have except for scars).

Again, in the Southeast US, the point is probably moot. Where I live, it makes a big difference.

Baby snakes are moisture-loss sensitive. Too little moisture results in a lessened feeding response in many baby snakes, or else pickiness. Yeah, some are difficult no matter what, but a keeper maximizes the potential of good feed response when the babies are kept in a way that prevents water loss.

We here focus on temperatures. That is also important, and water balance is just as important. Glad you mentioned it.
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Mark