Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I was just wondering, and i apologize if this is a dumb question, can you house multiple corn snakes together?

Thanks

Jeremy

depends on who you ask...alot will say no alot will say yes.
I do and have for years with no trouble.

You can if:

there the same sex
there the same size (Stress ect)
You feed them seperate and watch them after reintroduction
Your sure there both desease free
Tank is large enough
You have al least 2 hides in both the warm and cool side
Be preperared in case of illness have 2 vet bills instead of 1.

Take a small risk they eat each other. Happens on rare occasions. Mostly due to stress. It can happen 'spontaniosly' but mostly when they start eating the same prey or one of them smells like prey

Don't house more them 2 together though. Again due to stress.

In my opinion it is a very bad idea to house any snakes together for many apparent reasons.

* Snakes by nature are shy solitary animals,forcing them to be confined together creates stress.And stress leads to many health issues,such as feeding problems and regurgitation.

* Even thou corn snakes are not known to be cannibalistic as much as say kings or milks,for one corn to eat the other is not rare at all, I see it on forums and in chat quite often. And what usually happens is they both die in the process(specially when there both around the same size)

* Yes they will eventually mate the problem is males are sexually mature before females are, and the results often lead to egg binding and death,or a reduced life span.

* It also makes feeding harder, and keeping records such as sheds and defecation. And it makes it harder to track health. for example if you find a regurgitated meal or blood in the cage,How would you know which snake it came from?

* Cohabitation also leads to cross contamination of parasites and pathogens.

The list or reasons and arguments of why not to cohabitate snakes goes on and on.

The known problems are numerous and the advantages are none that I can see.
-----
-Chris

The reason mainstream thought is thought of as a stream is because it's so shallow. -George Carlin

A fool doesn't learn. A smart man learns from his mistakes. A wise man learns from the mistakes of others. Which one are you?

My Website
N. American Rat/Corn snake care sheet I wrote
Information on substrates

Current snakes:
0.1 Licorice Stick Black Rat (Lola)
1.0 Black Rat (Frankie)
0.1 Texas Bairdi (Rosa)
0.1 Blue Beauty (Brunhilde)
1.0 Green Tree Python (Monty)

n/p