Reptile & Amphibian Forums

im curious as to how eveyone keeps their neonate hatchlings housed. IE: water supply heat&temp control,hides,mediums,etc, i will post my methods later it works for me as im sure many different ways work for different folks and id love to hear some of them,,,,,,,,,,,,,thomas

Hey Thomas, I'm just a keeper but you know i add lot's of hatchlings to my collection.
this is what i use and do:
enclosure- individual shoebox (rubbermaid/sterilite)
temp- 75-80
substrate- 1" of pine shavings or aspen
hides- none
water- 24/7
food- every 3 to 7 days

very simple and effective with seldom a problem

If for ANY reason i have to extract a baby out of it's enclosure i ALWAYS use a small colubrid hook, it eliminates a lot of stress, babies can be very sensitive and can easily be too scared to eat.

I house the new born neonates in deli cups with a napkin as substrate and small plastic cups for water dises.

here is the water dish. The lids fit snug on top so they won't spill:

I use a sodering iron to cut out the tops :

snake stays dry and can drink until a few meals takes them to the next size up:

I use the Gladware or offbrand style food containers for larger neonates:

Since we have kids I kept all the empty baby food jars and they work well. These are lined with napkins as well:

Holes are burnt with a sodering iron as well:

thanks all,
i am curious about delicups as housing.is heat offered or are they just kept at warm temps? how is a temp. gradient established in a delicup?
i conventionally use shoebox's(rubbermaid,sterilite) with paper towel substrate small water bowl and folded newspaper as a hide i feed every 3to5days and i have heat rope that i drape over&under stacked boxes. i keep my snakeroom at around 75 sometimes spikes to 80, i only use the heat rope when babies have eaten to aid in digestion as of now none of my baby kings have eaten yet(only a week or so out of egg tho) my problem is i am producing over 50 kings this year and stacks&stacks&stacks of boxes is gonna cramp my space, i do like the boxes because of size and being able to offer a temp. gradient but the down side is space.so i guess my question is how impt. is cage size in neonates?,,,,,,,,thomas

...."tater salad". (Nod to Ron White)
I use these nowadays. It's easier for me in some ways since the lid's attached already. They can be awkward to balance with the lid open and take a little getting used to.They're something like the containers for potato salad or whatever at the deli.
The ones I use are 32oz and hold a neonate oretty well.
Can be a little tedious to clean, but I reuse them every year and have had a few others I know switch to them after seeing the size for the money. If I keep on track I can have them all clean and ready for next year in little time depending on just how many babies I have
I too use paper towels for substrate (napkins work well also- actually easier) and burn a few holes around the sides and in the top.
Water dishes are typically 1 1/4" pvc end caps.
I use the gladware stuff for my egg incubating boxes.
Scarlet kings are kept in the standard deli cups but with 1/16" holes punched in them.
:Mark

is here.
:Mark

thats cool mark do you provide a temp. gradient at all? or just keep them in temp. controlled room,,,,,,,, thanx tatersalad hahaha,,,,,,,,,,thomas

Not sure I could do that if I tried on such a small size. Maybe heat tape along the bottom??
Anyway, it's hot as hell here in FL most times and it's not too hard to keep them in the 80's. I do however cool my shed with a.c. on dog days.
:Mark

Hi thomas, 50, thats not many, I have to tell you what I did many years ago. At one time, I would produce 2 to 3 hundred mexicana and a few hundred cal kings a year. The mexicana we kept in groups, but the cal kings, oh my. I had babies(humans) at the time, so I use baby food jars. I would screw the lids to the bottom of shelves and simply screw the jars in and out. I did not keep them that way for long. Hence the begining of the business, I would wholesale them out.(not the pretty ones)

These days I have learned a lot about construction and can indeed make some things nicer.

This is the racks I use for babies now. Remember I only recently revisited kingsnakes. I bought the basic rack at Costco for 27 bucks. It holds twenty trays. I had to modify it with lids over each tray.

The trays have stops so you cannot slide them out the other side, always a good Idea. I also made stops so now its redundant.

I put a heatstrip in the back for a hot spot. Here we do not need any more ventilation, but if needed you could put holes in the lid or in the trays.

I will be building another soon, I already bought the basic rack.

I could not use deli cups or potato salad containers, either I would or snakes and montiors, on walkabout would knock them all over the place.

Nice setup and good price! What is your substrate? Aspen? The cage on the floor seems to have a mix? Thanks for sharing! All my w.c. neo's go in a 5 gal. terrarium with small bowl, aspen substrate and a hide. No temp gradient yet. all on dresser top, room temp, no ac. Temps are on the warm side but no problem feeders yet.
Todd Hughes

>> This is the racks I use for babies now. Remember I only recently revisited kingsnakes. I bought the basic rack at Costco for 27 bucks. It holds twenty trays. I had to modify it with lids over each tray.

Hey, I just bought one of those yesterday at costco! $24.95 I think it was.

Currently I put my cornsnake babies in the small 4.5" deli cups, and my kingsnake babies in 9" deli cups. My problem is that I like to have the baby snakes in the living room where I can see them and feed them, but we've been cat owners since last summer, and last summer I found that having deli cups and cats can be disastrous! We had one teeny tiny cal king hatchling that ate like he had been starved his whole life. He had his umbilical wrapped around him, couldn't absorb his yolk and I think he had serious problems getting nourishment at the end of his incubation. He was my favorite and I was planning on keeping him... until the day when his deli cup went missing. The only thing we can think might have happened is that the cat knocked the deli cup into the trash, when I already had some other delicups in the trash... nobody noticed and my little favorite got thrown away! (I felt SO awful).... so now the babies are in my bedroom.

When I saw that colorful rack at costco I thought that I could put the delicups into the drawers, eliminating my stupid cat's predilection for playing soccer with deli cups. BUT... if I could modify it to make it into an actual rack, that would be cool.

HOW did you make the lids work so the little itty bitty hatchlings can't get out of the rack? I would really love to hear more about that! Thank you in advance for sharing further details.

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~Sasheena

thats awsome frank thanks for sharing, where/what is costco?is it like walmart or what?im in houston and i need to get something just like that(pic you posted) preferably as inexpensive as well,,,,,man 100's of calikings!geeeeez i cant imagine that ,,, thanks again,,,,,,,,,,thomas

IIRC I read their average worker makes $17.00 per hour.

They have locations in TX, go here for a list...don't know if any are close to you.

http://www.costco.com/Warehouse/Location.aspx?country=United States

I picked up one of those carts today (could only find the 12 bin version) and I would also like to hear FR's suggestion for putting a lid on the tubs. I'm guessing he bent the slots to allow for a thin sheet of plexiglass to fit on top, but he's hard to predict. Maybe there is a better way. I hope so.