Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hello. I have been dabbling in snakes for about 8 months now, sadly not with much luck. My first was a tiny ring neck that my cousin somehow managed to lose when I was in the hospital. Then I bought an albino corn that was an hatchling, they sold it to me, telling me it was well over 4 months old. I was new to the snake world and sadly didnt know the difference. She rufused to eat, I lost her three weeks ago. Next was my snow corn, who did great! Until it escaped last weekend, still looking for that one. I have purchased two more. One is another Albino Corn, but the other is an Lavender King. The lavendar is the Horizontal strip, with some yellow in it, very pretty and seems to been pretty calm. This is my first offical King Snake, and I wasnt sure if there was much difference in an King and Corn. I still consider myself a newbie and looking for tons of advice. Thank all of you
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Blessed Be
Aradia
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1 Albino- Eden
1 Snow- Sage

I myself have had a couple bad experiences with the disappearance of my kingsnake ( although only twice, and he/she never went far). I also was unfortunate in purchasing a baby ball, who when recieved turned out to have a repiratory infection, and passed away even with treatment. I sympathize with your bad experiences.

Kinsnakes and Corn snakes and such tend to have generally the same type of requirements, although you should still look for specific information on each. Kingsnakes in my experience are fairly "easy" snakes in terms of care. They have excellent temperments and don't get to be very big. Although they don't seem that big, they're awful strong, so keep the top to your cage weighted down! I had two escape experiences with him/her and now have two 5 pound weights on each side of the tank and haven't had a problem since. To try and find your snake escapee, try looking around warm areas in the room it disappeared in. They also like to hide in the folds of material, and under things (gives that feeling of security). Good luck.

Blessed be, Miw

Basically, there are only two kinds of snake keepers: Those who have had one escape, and those who WILL have one escape. Just about every specimen of just about every species can be considered an escape artist. Kingsnakes seem to excel in this talent relative to many other species, but corns also are pretty good at it.

Corns and kings are, IMO, both very good choices. Corns may be a bit more temperamental in general than most kingsnakes, but alot depends on the individual snake. They have their personalities. I've seen wonderfully docile corns, and I've seen some relatively aggressive kings. Both have been bred widely to produce an enormous array of pattern/color/genetic traits (California Kings especially, as far as the kingsnake end of it).
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MichaelB